This year at Baldwin High School, the Bash and Homecoming traditions will look a little different. The Bash and Homecoming will be featured on the same night at the second home football game.
Senior Chloe Neufeld is helping plan this night with the rest of the executive Student Council.
“The biggest struggle is trying to make everyone happy with the limited amount of time we have to plan events,” Neufeld said. “We want to make it a fantastic night but we sometimes worry about the unknowns.”
Many are looking forward to this change but many are also skeptical about how everything will work out. Assistant Principal Kelli Haeffner explained why the change was made to how it is.
“When you look at when we would typically do homecoming, it would have been that third home game, it would be interfering with the maple leaf festival,” Haeffner said, “We kind of had to weigh the pros and the cons because many of our families go out of town that weekend, and it would’ve been difficult with the pep rally parade and the Maple Leaf parade interfering with each other, so there was just going to be a lot of challenges.”
This year, the Homecoming game will be played on Sep. 12 along with the parade. The parade is also looking different this year, but it will still be held before the game at 5 p.m.
“I’m extremely excited for the golf cart floats and our walking taco stand,” Neufeld said.
“I don’t know if this changes anything for the football game, kickoff will still be at 7 p.m. and there will be a coronation at halftime,” Haeffner said.
The Bash is no longer being funded by the booster club, who has helped fund the event for the past 25 years and said they were not going to help anymore because of all of the planning it took.
“The biggest thing I’m probably looking forward to is seeing something new,” Haeffner said “This would not have been our first pick because of all the struggles and challenges student council had some really difficult decisions to make, administration had some very different difficult decisions to make with the shifts we had to do this year.”
“Personally I was never the biggest fan of the Bash because it never felt centered around the football team and it felt more focused on the entire school,” junior quarterback Bryis Alford said, “I think that our game is going to be a tough one against Ottawa but I’m always grateful that we can play a game on a Friday night and celebrate homecoming.