With the ISU football season just starting, some ISU students reminisce about their high school homecoming celebrations.

Will Kuehner, sophomore in mechanical engineering originally from Turkey Valley Community School. He said that homecoming is also a great opportunity to reconnect with old friends.

“Usually you just find your niche of friends, you sit in the bleachers with them and you catch up or talk about what happened that week of school,” Kuehner said.

Kuehner said the student council voted on days to dress up and show school spirit the week before the homecoming game. Kuehner said the themes were either a hit or miss.

“There was a lot of controversy in our school actually about what we could do,”  Kuehner said. “We couldn’t have Pirate Day because it was offensive to the pirates, which was ridiculous.”

Kuehner said the day he usually went all out was “Transgender Day.”

“I wore two dresses in my high school career; I didn’t wear heels though,” Kuehner said with a laugh.

Calvin Song, sophomore in pre-business, graduated from Ames High School, and was even on his high school’s homecoming court.

Like Kuehner, Song said Ames High had dress up days the week before the big game, but it also had other unique traditions.

“The weekend before, the homecoming committee gets permission from the parents of the students on homecoming court, and they go house to house waking them up. They record their reaction on tape,” Song said. “It’s just a bunch of girls yelling in your room.”

Both Kuehner and Song said their schools’ students nominated seniors to be on the homecoming court, but Ames High had a special spot on the court for a boy and girl each from band, called “Band Raid.” Kuehner said the homecoming court at his school would perform a dance or a skit to a popular song.

On Friday before the game, both schools would have a pep rally. Song said that this is when they would show baby pictures of students on the homecoming court, along with their taped reactions of the morning they were told they made the homecoming court. During the assembly, the homecoming court would help raise school spirit.

“Depending on the theme of the year, everyone had to do something,” Song said. “Someone did a dare; someone did ‘truth.’ I had to go around acting like an ape, banging my chest and yelling throughout the gym.”

As for going back to attend the games, Kuehner and Song agreed that age makes a difference.

“Once you’re a sophomore or a junior [in college], you lose a lot of friends that are actually going to school at that point,” Kuehner said. “So there aren’t as many people to go back and see.

“A lot of people actually stay where I’m from, so those people are usually at the games. Some of the people who were more involved in football go back for the bigger games.”

Kuehner also said that being from a school that had about 500 students K-12 encouraged graduates to visit. Song said he predicts Ames High will have a high return of graduates since the football team has been successful so far this season.

“It really depends on how much fun they had at homecoming and high school and how much they want to show their pride again,” Song said. “People were interested in the game. I remember one year, the lights actually went out during the football game, but people watched the game anyway. I’ll definitely go back later in life.”