It is the end of September, so you know what time it is! It’s time for homecoming and students at Alliance are spending their days participating in school supervised activities.

Any students knows that the school they attend normally dedicates an entire week to hyping the students up for the Friday night football game. Homecoming gives students a chance to show their school spirit through an array of dress up themes set for a specific day in the week. Most commonly, the dress up days are based on the overall homecoming theme. This year, the theme was “Welcome to the Jungle”.

On Monday September 25, the first day of homecoming, students crowded the hallways wearing their most comfortable pajamas. For Tuesday, the halls were filled with tropical flower shirts and binoculars for Tropical Tourist or animal print day. On Wednesday, the school’s inner hunter came out when students dressed in camouflage and stalked through the hallways “Hunting for a Victory” as the name of the theme states. The student body went wild for the Bulldogs on Thursday dressed in tie-dye and on the final day of homecoming week, royal blue and white were worn for King of the Jungle day.

When asked, most students can normally agree that their favorite thing about homecoming is being able to make a fool of themselves. The theme days give all students the chance to participate and have fun, but what really makes the school pop even when the students are not walking the hallways? That would be the class hallway decorating contest.

This contest is another activity students can participate in. Each grade level has its own designated hallway where that age group of students’ lockers can be found. This week, the halls did more than house the students’ binders and books. Once the hallways were decorated to match the homecoming theme, each hallway was judged to see which hallway was the best. They all looked amazing.

This year, the senior hallway won with its ten foot tall lion, yellow jeep sculpture, and their own hashtag, “#onelastride”. The senior hallway had strings of lights and vines draped down from the ceilings. There were a few palm trees placed by the lockers and paper snakes were slithering their way across the top of the lockers and on the floor. There were also a couple of wild monkeys caught swinging around above the palm trees on the vines. This year, seniors went crazy over this idea for the hallway and to say they pulled it off is an understatement. The Class of 2018 really outdid themselves this year.

Outside of the themes and decorations, the students were also highly active during the mini olympic games. Teams of students, made up of four girls and four boys each, competed in multiple mini games out on the practice field on Tuesday afternoon. Each team fought hard for a chance to compete in the tie breaker round. Eventually, two final teams were chosen based on the amount of points scored during the games to go against one another in an intense game of tug-of-war during the pep assembly on Thursday. The tie breaker would decide this year’s mini olympic champs.

Thursday, September 28, had a lot of exciting things for students to look forward to. The second to last homecoming day started off like any other with students dressed up for that day’s theme and looking forward to the shortened activity schedule for that day. All classes were shortened to make time for the Lip Sync Battle that would take place in the school gymnasium at 2 P.M. Different groups of students signed up and took their turns up on stage in front of the whole school to lip sync to some of our favorite songs. There were a few specific groups that stood out when some injured students joined in and used their crutches to their advantage making their motions all that much bigger. It made for something hilarious and entertaining to watch, but one performance that may have shocked everybody the most was when the AHS staff took the stage and blew everyone away with their version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens.

Later in the night at 7 O’clock, it was time for coronation. The cheerleaders opened the show as they danced to the pep band and also performed their coronation dance. The cheerleaders have always been a crowd favorite, but this year they stepped it up a notch with their stunting.

After the cheerleaders finished their routine, select representatives of the school’s fall sports teams were asked to come down and say a few words. They thanked the parents and school for their support and help during this year’s games. Most of the representatives kept their speaking short and to a T, but they also highly encouraged other students to join their activity.

After the excitement slightly died down, the second group of cheerleaders made their way to the gym floor. It was by far the most talked about thing at school on Friday as these cheerleaders were not our usual cheer squad. That’s right. We are talking about the Mr. Cheerleader competition.

Last year, Mr. Cheerleader wasn’t an option for Alliance due to the the lack of participants, but this year the group of boys who joined did not disappoint. They had fun, made fools of themselves, dressed in extremely tight cheerleader uniforms complete with bows, and shook what their mama’s gave them. The crowd went wild with the competition between the boys at an all time high, then the best of the best male cheerleaders were crowned.

Mr. Jump Queen: Corbin Stark

Mr. Drama Queen: Conner Twogood

Mr. Sunshine: Baily Hood

Mr. Congeniality: Jayden Bauer

Mr. Cheerleader: DJ Martinez

For the second to last event of the night, the homecoming court nominees were introduced. The names of the student and their parents were read off as they walked to the center of the gym floor. Eventually, the winning attendants for each class were named.

Freshmen Attendants: Courtney Cox and Ian Erickson

Sophomore Attendants: Cameron Tritle and Charlie Otto

Junior Attendants: Madilyn Garza and Corbin Stark

Second Attendants: Domonique Harris and Cade Pfeiffer

First Attendants: Shae Toof and Nathan Fancher

Homecoming King and Queen: Dani Carter and Dj Martinez

After the cheerleaders crowned this year’s royalty, Mrs. Danielle Swanson closed coronation, wished the the football players good luck in the football game, and introduced the night’s last and most iconic homecoming event, the burning of the A. The crowd cleared out of the gymnasium and congregated outside of the school where the A was set on fire. Firefighters stood by in case of an emergency, but thankfully, no such precautions were necessary. When each class was separated into their own sections around the A, they all took part in cheering along with the cheerleaders. The classes chanted out and competed in competitions to see who could cheer the loudest. This year was the year that all of the classes equally participated and cheered the loudest as a whole. In the end, there had to be a winner. After some tough competition between the juniors and seniors, the seniors came out on top and finished out the night shouting the senior song.

So far, the 2017-2018 school year has been one for the books and homecoming has only contributed to the excitement factor. The only thing left for this year’s homecoming, is the football team’s Friday night victory against the Hastings Tigers.