During the second week of October, Irvington High School ASG set up the school’s annual Homecoming Week, culminating in spirit events, the Homecoming Rally, and the Dance on October 18. The theme for this year, “Irvington’s Got Game,” resulted in class themes inspired by board games, such as Game of Life for freshmen, Battleship for sophomores, Monopoly for juniors, and Candyland for the seniors. The week also featured lunchtime activities and morning rallies, boosting school spirit overall.
Each morning before the school day started, class officers held rallies in the courtyard to elevate pride within each grade. Chants of “SOPH-MORES” and “TWENTY-EIGHT! TWENTY-EIGHT” were audible from as far as the library end of the horseshoe. Many of the classes also took a run around campus, then took a picture with all the rally participants. The Seniors crashed each morning rally, even doing a mock tai chi session one morning. To respond to this, the other classes shouted chants of “SuperSenior”. To give a final boost of school spirit at the end of the week, all the classes showed up on Friday for the Unity Morning Rally. Before the week, each class worked hard to prepare their class bench, which was featured in the courtyard on the day of their morning rally. “We actually pulled four consecutive all-nighters.” stated Rosemary Joseph (12) one of the senior class officers. “There’s just a lot of planning involved from preparing for morning rallies to gathering stuff for the all-nighter.” Many of the decorations were especially impressive — the winners of the bench competition, class of 27, had wooden Viking boats.
The first lunch event of the week featured the Homecoming Court Top 10 reveal, in which the top 10 candidates were announced. Despite a few difficulties with the projection, the crowd of mostly seniors cheered as Brayden Jaksa, Maya McCartney, Reilly Akana, Kelly Jia, Rosemary Joseph, Allissa Lo, Julia Fung, Vincent Le, Jasmine Yolangco, and Natalie Brahan made their way through the red carpet.
The next day, each class competed in a lip sync battle in the gym. The sophomores won the battle with their performance of “Single Ladies,” featuring a bunch of boys in white tank tops and blue tutus. The juniors and seniors also put on good performances, including some very inventive uses of props from the juniors. The freshmen also had vibrant Hawaiian outfits.
“Lip sync was honestly an amazing experience,” said Jay Bhimani (10), one of the sophomore class officers who performed. “All the work we put in was worth it when we performed our lip sync, and we won.”
Unfortunately, Wednesday’s planned staff versus students basketball game was canceled due to gym maintenance. The game had been set to feature several teachers and Brayden Jaksa (12) against the combined force of the boys and girls basketball teams.
During Thursday at lunch, class dance was held in the big gym, unlike the past few years when it was held on the blacktop. The spirited freshmen and sophomore put up energetic performances. The juniors pumped up the crowd by dancing to the electrifying song from Barbie, “Dance the Night Away.” A small group of dancers from their grade captured the crowd’s attention with a fast beat choreography to “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar. When the seniors made their way to their places, the crowd cheered the most, excited to see their performances. The seniors had dances to songs like “No Hands,” and “Sugar,” and “We’re All in this Together.” As tradition, the students formed a mosh at the end of each dance and chanted their grade level, such as “Seniors” to finish off class dance strong.
Thursday night featured the Homecoming football game, during which the Vikings lost 49–7 to the Piedmont Highlanders. Despite the loss, many students in attendance had a good time, dressing up in a blackout theme. The cheerleading team and marching band delivered crowd-rousing performances at halftime. Following their performance, Homecoming Royalty was announced, consisting of Reilly Akana, Kelly Jia, Brayden Jaksa, and Maya McCartney.
The Homecoming Theme this year was “All Of The Lights,” featuring little disco balls as decorations and vibrant beaded chains for students to wear.
The Homecoming Rally started at 7 p.m. in the big gym, with rally commissioners Rithik Bhat and Lawrence Jia leading the rally. A unique game that the class officers participated in was Dress to Impress.
“People really loved the Dress To Impress Game,” said Ayesha Abdussamy (11), who is ASG’s Rally Executive. The game featured the class officers, who emulated the popular Roblox game “Dress to Impress” on the floor of the gym. “We had a lot of input from ASG members, and a couple of our friends as well, to see what they wanted to see in their rallies. That’s how we ended up with these games and events.”
The rally commissioners also led several other games throughout the course of the rally, including an obstacle course race between two couples in giant T-shirts. The rest of the rally featured awesome performances from cheer, ICED, and the sophomore lip sync team.
Of course, the moment everyone in the rally had been waiting for was the reveal of Homecoming Royalty and the class spirit point totals. After a dramatic entrance from each member of the Homecoming Court, the top 4 candidates lined up near two viking ship decorations. They each popped a balloon and the glitter inside revealed the two winners; Reilly Akana and Kelly Jia who were crowned Homecoming King and Queen, respectively. As for class spirit points, after a premature celebration from the sophomores, the seniors (as always) came out on top, just barely edging out the sophomores. Near the end of the rally, each class performed a lip sync to a famous pop song. Then, the crowd broke into an enthusiastic chant to “FEIN” before heading outside.
The courtyard was alive with a buzz of excitement as students started forming lines to get food. The lines for food were more organized this year unlike a few years before where things got very chaotic. The Hoco Dance lasted till 10 pm and had students forming energetic moshes to the songs the DJ played, including songs like “Last Friday Night”, “Anaconda”, and “Sheila Ki Jawani”. The smoke from the DJ’s smoke machine definitely amplified the crowd’s energy. Teju Tubati (9), one of the freshmen class officers stated, “I didn’t have much expectations as we were new to the school this year. But, I really enjoyed the dance. I met a lot of people, and it was a great time to relax.”
When students were not at the food station or at the dance floor, they were taking photos with their friends against the colorful backdrops all around the courtyard. Brandon Liang, a senior attending Homecoming for the first time, generally enjoyed hanging out with his friends. “I liked taking pictures with my friends and seeing them all dressed up,” he said.
Although it was dark, the lively music and vibrant decorations created the perfect spirit of Homecoming for students to create lasting memories. Overall, the Hoco ’24 dance marked a successful and exciting end to a great week of Homecoming festivities.
