By Brett Schlossberg

Homecoming is a time at schools all over the country where alumni revisit their alma maters, students greatly anticipate the Homecoming dance, and the football game is one of the most widely attended games of the season. At Woodward, the special event is over the course of a week, usually in mid-October. However this year, homecoming is barely a month into school. Why is that? 

The scheduling of Homecoming is less straightforward than it seems. Dr. Jonathan Merrill, the Upper School principal, explained that the scheduling is a real team effort with many aspects to plan.

“So homecoming is… partly scheduled by our alumni office because… one big part of homecoming is the reunion weekends for our alumni. …our football coaches, because obviously they wanna schedule a game that is gonna be a good game for a big homecoming crowd… the upper school administration and student life has a role in selecting the homecoming date as well…because we schedule the homecoming dance and parade around that date,” Dr. Merrill said.

In addition to the various groups involved in planning, the school has constraints on when this event can be. The first home football game of the season cannot be the homecoming game, nor can the last one, as that is Senior Night. That leaves three options. Usually it works out so there is a home game in the middle of October, but not this year, as Coach Chris Myers, the Director of Student Affairs, a.k.a the Dean of Fun, pointed out.

“The way that the football calendar fell this year… we happen to be away two or three weeks in a row plus a bye week, and so those dates happen to fall where what would be an ideal homecoming usually,” Coach Myers said.

The dance is much earlier than normal, but it could have potentially been even earlier if not for the reunions. The dance is normally the week before the Homecoming game, but this year it is a week after. Why could the dance not be the day after the football game, you may ask?

“Reunions are happening on campus and they take up a lot of space, a lot of resources, and there also happens to be alcohol involved and so we don’t, we don’t mix that um, that aspect with our younger students…,” Coach Myers said. “We’re actually doing the dance a week later… to give all of y’all [the students] more than enough time. Instead of literally having the Homecoming dance three weeks into school, it’s five weeks into school.” 

The timing of the homecoming week means planning has to start earlier than usual. Normally, those involved start planning the event about a month before. This year they had to begin in the summer. 

“We chose a theme already…,” Coach Myers said. “We normally wouldn’t have done that for probably several weeks… but thankfully we had them all in place… we have… ideas and activities for… Homecoming week… Those discussions are already happening and we’re not even a week into school.” 

Although homecoming is scheduled so much earlier than previous years, it will still be a fun event. Many students are still just as excited for all the festivities during the special week. 

“Regardless of whether it’s in September, October, or November, [Homecoming] always is one of the big highlights of the fall semester and I expect it will be this year, too,” Dr. Merrill said.