A night in the big city homecoming dance took place on Oct. 2, courtesy of the Student Council. Homecoming festivities and spirit week had taken place prior to the dance, and StuCo was busy with preparations.

Many students look forward to homecoming, the events, and the games that come with it. However, to make this all happen, there is work to be put in behind the scenes.

A night in the big city was announced on Sep.10 through StuCo’s Instagram account. While students thought and prepared for the dance, StuCo members began planning for the events ahead.

“We start by breaking into committees,” junior member Hope Stephens said. “So it depends on your committee, for my group I’m powder puff, so the first thing we did was we got shirts made. And we got permission forms made for the people who wanted to play, and we had to get coaches and refs like right off the bat.”

Each committee began working on their projects, split into different groups for each event.

“It is the most hands-on group of people I have ever met,” Stephens said. “For like four or five weeks straight we pretty much double the time we go from meetings that are typically one hour to two hours planning for homecoming. And you are working nonstop, we split up into different committees and each group has a thing they’re doing. You get there and go at it for two hours.”

Powder Puff and Buff Puff were planned by committees and they spent a lot of time in and outside of council meetings. 

“I was on the powder puff committee,” sophomore member Laci Lister said. “And we planned the entire football thing pretty much from scratch because we lost all our stuff from the first time we did this, we could not find our binder, and because we’ve only had two other homecomings, we really had nothing to go off of.”

Many steps went into the planning of the dance, and committee meetings could be a struggle.

“I think our most important part of the planning process was just having everybody there,” Lister said. “Because there were a lot of times that not the whole StuCo wasn’t there, or we’d be missing people and it was kind of a struggle but it worked out.”

As the dance zeroed in, they hoped for the best.

“It was a lot of wishing,” Lister said. “Like cross-your-fingers-this-works-out situations.”

But when the dance kicked off, StuCo watched their work come to life.

“My favorite part was doing it for the school,” Lister said. “Because I’ve never gotten to plan something like that so it was really fun to be involved with it and see all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Because you never really appreciate it until you see what goes on in the background.” 

After the dance finished, StuCo stayed late to clean up.

“We had to stay after the dance to clean up,” Stephens said. “But it was actually decently quick, and the administration is very helpful about staying late. I think we were done by twelve am.”

After the busy times, the members have the next week off.

“Seeing it all pay off and see everyone enjoy the dance and getting to take everything down and just go home, you feel so relaxed afterward,” Stephens said.