Homecoming week is easily one of the busiest weeks of the school year for Ripon High School. The leadership class has been struggling with how to please the student body with a fun-filled week without actually having a dance.

“Having the Back to School dance, the Homecoming dance, the Halloween dance, and then the Winter Formal is four dances within a semester. It’s pushing it,” states Junior Maria Soto.

Instead of four dances in the first semester, Ripon High will have three dances, including a retrial of the Halloween dance. Soto claims that the Halloween dance is pending on student participation and the dance last year was cancelled for that very reason. Not only is the leadership class stressing about the Halloween dance, but they are also stressing about the student body’s participation of the Marvel-themed aspect of it.

Junior Class Vice President Elias Herrera states, “It’s very stressful doing it [the skits and rallies] on top of all other homework. Bringing a team together to be able to pull something off that’s great is probably the most stressful.” It is difficult for people to participate in activities such as the class skit or the creation of the class float because students are too shy or have too many other activities going on. However, once the students do participate, they have a lot of fun and wish they had participated in earlier years.

Participation has never been an issue for English teacher, Mrs. Burton, who coordinated coronations for twenty-nine years. She states, “I’ve thought about getting out of it the last few years just because I’m tired and running out of fresh ideas. This just seemed like the right time to get out because Mrs. Ochoa was interested in doing it […] We always had to right away order crowns, sashes, and medallions; we were always in charge of the cars, the grand marshal, and the previous king and queen. I would also order the flowers and write up the scripts for the biography for the announcers.”

Planning something as important as homecoming is not easy, but with the right mentality and the right help, anything can become simple. What Burton has passed to Mrs. Ochoa will change for the better and what the leadership class has planned will shape Ripon High School’s future homecomings.