Crookston High School’s Homecoming Week will take place from Sunday, September 13, to Friday, September 18, with entertaining athletic events, creative theme days, and plenty of school spirit taking place throughout the week.
Student Council Advisor Linda Morgan oversees homecoming planning, which began just before the start of the school year. She works alongside the student council to organize the week’s events and determine the theme days, when students dress up based on a different theme each day of the week. “We started almost the first week of school, or even before we had a meeting, and we just started with the themes, and it was pretty easy. The kids are pretty easy to work with, so we just started to plan out the days, and that’s basically what’s easiest. The hardest part is what days we’re going to have.”
This year’s themes include Jersey Day on Monday, Toes Out Tuesday, Color Wars on Wednesday, Soccer Mom or Barbeque Dad Day on Thursday, and Pirate Spirit Day on Friday.
This year, the homecoming events kick off on Sunday, September 13, with the annual powderpuff football game at 6:00 p.m. This event was moved to Sunday night this year to allow more parents, students, and community members to get involved and watch the game. “One of the reasons is to get the parents more out, and then we’ll get the student body out here. It’s just a lot of students, we let them out for the afternoon and stuff like that, and a lot of them left, and they didn’t support and stay for the powder puff, and so just to kind of change it up a little bit. We’ll see how it goes.”
In addition to the theme days, other activities during Homecoming Week include the royalty coronation on Monday at 1:00 p.m., girls volleyball versus Ada-Borup-West starting with C-team at 5:00 p.m., JV at 6:00 p.m., and varsity at 7:15 p.m.; the boys volleyball tournament on Tuesday beginning at 10:00 a.m. with girls soccer versus East Grand Forks at 4:00 p.m.; girls’ tennis versus Perham/NYM on Thursday at 4:00 p.m.; pepfest on Friday at 2:30 p.m., the homecoming football game versus Polk County West at 6:00 p.m., and the homecoming dance at the school from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. Tickets for the dance are $10. One change to the dance this year is the start time due to another event at the school, but Morgan has seen more students stick around for the full dance since it was shortened from three to two hours. “I just noticed that with two-hour dances, it just works out so much better. The kids stay; they’re dancing almost the whole time. It seems like before, when we had the three-hour dances, kids were leaving, and so it’s just fun to see for two hours.”
Morgan always enjoys getting the students together to organize the homecoming events and seeing how the festivities go during the week. “My favorite process is just to see the excitement. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and when I have a great group of kids to work with, and you just see that when these kids turn seniors, you just see the excitement in them, and like this is their last homecoming, and so I like to make fun for the kids, and it’s for them to make it fun.”
