Written by: Ariel Connell, Staff writer
The Homecoming Assembly brings the start of Poly Homecoming festivities!
This time of year, people are buzzing with excitement for our annual homecoming weeks. To start ‘HoCo’ season off, we had our yearly homecoming assembly, where Kat Lounsberry and Michael Gaines announced the homecoming theme for this year; Next Level Homecoming!
Now you may be wondering what next level homecoming is. The theme is based off of video games, with the subcategories being: Freshman; Candy Crush, sophomores; Pac-Man, juniors; Minecraft, and seniors; Mario Kart. The theme announcement at the assembly was met with cheers from the entire stands, claps were even heard outside of the gym. It is safe to say that many students were happy about the theme.
Post announcements, Pep Squad was invited to perform in front of the students. They displayed an amazing performance to the song ‘Shut Up and Drive’ by Rihanna, famously known for being in the video-game-based movie Wreck It Ralph! Many students, including Alana Lewis (12), think Pep Squad was the best part of the assembly. She tells us, “I like their dances and they always bring so much energy to the assemblies! Their music selection was also really good this year.”
After that, ASB invited students from each grade level to join together to play some competitive games. Jacob Flores (10), a competitor in the balloon relay game states, “It was really fun competing in the race. [It] was a minigame that takes one person from each class year and competes to make the balloon go across the gym before the other team does.” Once the first relay was won, a second took place, and they competed for the overall class winner. The second game was called Papa’s Pizzaria, where students had to compete with each other, two from each class, to knock pizza boxes out of each other’s hands without dropping their pizza box.
This year, ASB invited a student, Issael Bosquez, to perform There’s A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths. It was a crowd favorite, and students joined in lighting their phone flashlights and vibing to the music together.
Not only did Pep Squad perform, but so did some of Poly’s very own VAPA clubs, including Ballet Flororico and the SATB Choir, Chamber Singers. Ballet Flororico had not previously performed at another assembly for years, so getting to see them perform was truly beautiful. [Insert photo of the ballet Flororico girl here. Caption: Ballet Flororico performing their dance.] To send off the students and finish the assembly, the choir sang the decades old alma mater. Alana Lewis speaks on behalf of the choir when she says, “I genuinely enjoyed singing, I liked how in the first concert the students clapped with us, but I was also glad when they stopped, to not mess up the tempo. I love performing at the assemblies every chance we get.”
This year’s assembly was one of the best Poly has put on in a while, but it did not come without work. The ASB Commissioner of Assemblies, Maya Moran tells, “The weeks leading up to the assembly me and my co-commissioners started brainstorming decorations, games and performances.” She reached out to many groups on campus to invite them to perform in the assembly along with recruiting people to help us film the assembly video. She continues to state, “once we ordered our decorations and games materials I had ASB start working on their class poster and the side posters relating to the sub-themes.” During the week of the assembly she focused on finalizing details like the script and the slideshow. There is a lot of work that ASB puts in to make these assemblies perfect, the night before ASB had mandatory assembly set up to hang up posters and make balloon arches. Maya says that, “this is also where we filmed the game shows played on the slideshow. Then, the next morning we had optional setup at 5:45 in mandatory set up at 7:30 in the morning. We made float arches at the entrance and set up Next Level Homecoming balloons hung on the arches. We’re the only able to do this run through where we tested all the audio and timing of the performances before the actual assembly.” ASB is truly remarkable in all the time they put into these things, really giving back to the community they serve!
Overall, the assembly was a wonderful start to our Homecoming festivities to come.