What exactly is homecoming in high school?

Homecoming started out originally as a date when alumni came back to the school, usually for a football game and a dance. Nowadays, I don’t think alumni really are involved and it’s just an autumn event. Still a football game and an accompanying dance, but the literal “homecoming” part has fallen by the wayside.

When I was in high school, Homecoming was sort of the kickoff social event of the school year.

At my high school, homecoming was the first “social event” on campus. It came with a parade (which I don’t think they do any longer), a football game (which we usually lost, but they have a better team now from what I understand), and a dance.

We weren’t a very spirited campus. I never attended homecoming. I don’t feel as though I missed out on anything.

I really did enjoy Homecoming. I went to a small school though and it was a close knit student body so when you cheered for the football team, you really cared about the guys who were playing and wanted them to win. The whole parade (we also had one), football game and dance was fun. Even the buildup to the event was great. Each class level built a float, so there were late nights hanging out building it with your friends and a lot of crepe paper. The student government sold mum corsages too, as a fundraiser and they made the corsages themselves, so if you were involved in that group you participated in that activity. If your date got you a corsage, you got to wear it to school the day of the event and then to the football game that night. There was also a big bonfire the night before the game. The autumn theme (leaves, mums, pumpkins, hay bales) was emphasized and I love autumn, so that was nice for me. The girls wore plaid wool skirts, blouses and blazers for the game, unless you were cheering or on the dance team and a pretty, semi-formal dress for the dance. I have really good memories of Homecoming.

Our school had a dwindling cheerleading squad (when I was a senior there were five members, to put it into perspective) so that may or may not have had an impact on the event. We weren’t a huge campus (around 2500 students) but we were far from close knit. It probably has to do with demographic and generational differences. There were students who loved homecoming at my school and wouldn’t have missed it for anything and many of our teachers were alumni themselves and attended most of the games. I just wasn’t interested in it at all.

They had parades at homecoming? maybe i did miss something.

@muppetish My school had five cheerleaders on the squad as the norm, so that gives you an idea how small it was. I attended Fort Knox High School, which is one of only two high schools actually located on a military base. The other is Fort Campbell High School. So, we were all Army brats, had that in common and also all moved around a lot, so we bonded easily. I attended high school from 1978–81, so it was a bit more innocent of a time with no Internet or video games, so hanging out with your friends and participating in school activities was more the thing to do.

Diavolobella, my Kentucky friend. thanks for your answers.

I’m actually your Tennessee friend. :)

We had a kind of parade, just two or three floats pulled around the football field, on the track. The King & Queen and court rode in convertibles. Funny how rinky-dink that sounds to me now, back then it seemed important enough.

@diavolobella

I just got out of high school and I didn’t know that about “homecoming”. But yes, it’s a football game and an associated dance. Additionally, there are people elected by the student population to be on the “homecoming court” and are featured at the dance, just like at prom.

I was nominated for the homecoming court in sophomore year. Didn’t win, but made it to the finals. :)

Homecoming was a very big deal when I was in high school. We lived in a small town in the midwest, where everything pretty much shut down for football and basketball games. If you drove through town during a game, you wouldn’t see a single person or another car! The weeks leading up to Homecoming featured things like a poster contest among students, decorated store windows downtown, and voting for Homecoming King and Queen. One year my friends and I got 2nd place for our “spirit poster.” :)

Because it was a small town and a lot of the alumni still lived in the area, there would be tons of people at the Homecoming game. Of course, most of them came to all of the other games as well! Almost all the students went to the dance after the game. The dance itself was like all the other dances, held in the school cafeteria with students acting as DJs and teachers acting as chaperones.

We also had a spring homecoming during basketball season. It was almost as popular. This was Indiana, where we all tried to live up to the movie “Hoosiers,” after all. My younger brother, who was star of both the football and basketball team, was a local celebrity through most of high school. When I was home from college and paid for things by check or introduced myself to someone, they’d literally gasp and say, “Are you related to HIM?”

Our homecoming was an end of the school year event. It was usually a week or two before graduation.

Our school’s was in autumn, we had a parade, and alumni came back in droves for the tailgating, dance and football game, although the alumni had a separate dance at a local country club from the then-current students. I don’t know if that’s changed. I haven’t been back to my high school in ~25 years.

My daughter goes to a catholic colllege prep high school and it’s a big, big deal. It’s not till middle endish of October and they’re already all excited about it. I guess it’s a formal dance and football game.