I would like to preface this by saying the following: I know that Hurricane Sandy devastated people’s homes and business all across the Northeast, including Westport, and I am truly sorry to all of those who were impacted. And the loss of life, which has been profound, is immeasurable and unfathomable. There are fears as well the presidential election will be affected.
But I’m a teenager. Let’s face it, there are other concerns.
I found out recently that the Staples homecoming game will be held on Tuesday Nov. 13 rather than Saturday Nov. 10, because of Sandy.That sucks. There’s simply no other way to say it, because it just does. As a senior, I’ve watched for 3 years as the oldest kids in school pull up to the field with their cars all decorated and chant the various cheers.
It’s my turn, plain and simple.
Homecoming on a Tuesday night presents a multitude of problems. Not just for seniors, but for students in general.
First of all, there’s spirit week. What are we supposed to do? Wear pajamas, decade clothing, college logo wear, and blue and white all on Monday? Wow, that will really get the point across! I’m sorry, but if they think I’m going to celebrate Spirit Week after Homecoming they are sadly mistaken. What’s the point? The game already happened…
Additionally, I’m interested to see how they handle the annual Pep Rally. I know for a fact that teachers aren’t exactly going to be thrilled about having us all drop our lesson plans for a chunk of the day to go outside and watch various sports walk across the field. It’s a Tuesday, which means students are still mildly interested in school (I’d say Wednesday is where I draw the line), so it seems pretty unlikely to me that we’ll be allowed to stop everything. We’ve already missed an entire week of school, and somehow I don’t really see teachers putting the Pep Rally ahead of the weeks’ worth of material that we now will have to make up.
What about the other teams that may have their own state/FCIAC games? What about the people in Players who may have Tech Week? Do they have to miss Homecoming? And then there’s the fact that the motorcade is going to be in the pitch black… It would have been a chilly November morning anyway, but now that seniors will be forced to hang outside their cars at night, I’m expecting it to be downright freezing.
Although the Staples administration isn’t technically to blame for the schedule switch (the FCIAC changed all of the Nov. 10 games to Nov. 13), I still think they deserve some of the blame. Having Homecoming in the middle of November is downright stupid. I know they’re still trying to teach us a lesson after the disastrous homecoming of 2009, but we (the seniors) were freshmen, and I’d say the majority of us were probably just as terrified of the intoxicated teens as the administration was. Last year, I stood in the frigid cold, and got snowed on. Yes, I did have a good time at Homecoming, but the “Snowcoming” was entirely avoidable.
It’s been four years.
We get it: don’t do anything stupid.
This is what they get for trying to “stick it to us” by having Homecoming so late in the year. And that genius 10 a.m. game time doesn’t even matter anymore, because now we have a night game anyway.
With homecoming on a Tuesday night, the administration is basically asking seniors to skip on Wednesday. I’m not guaranteeing that the school will be empty of upperclassmen, but I know that some people will be filing in to school late or possibly just not showing up at all. Seniors missing Wednesday is just collateral damage.
And the day before Homecoming? If they think I am going to file into the auditorium to watch another video of people getting their stomachs pumped after they have essentially ruined this year’s homecoming, they’ve got another thing coming.
I’ve done a lot of complaining here, I know. And as I said, there are people out there who are actually suffering.
But there actually is an relatively easy fix to the problem as far as I can see. The FCIAC website shows that neither Staples nor Westhill has a game next Saturday, November 17. So I urge the administration to work it out some way to move the long-awaited Homecoming game back to that familiar 10 a.m. time on that Saturday. In the end, it will mean fewer seniors missing school.
It might even contribute to the overall goal in this post-Sandy madness: getting things back to normal.
