It’s Homecoming Week at NHS

For Noblesville High School alumni, Homecoming Week means visiting their old stomping ground, seeing their former classmates and teachers, and being welcomed back home for Friday night’s Homecoming Football game.

For NHS students, Homecoming Week kicked off Monday with Spirit Week — with themed dress-up days every day this week — and float building for each class — freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors — and a Homecoming Parade set for this Friday afternoon, Homecoming Game on Friday night and a Homecoming Dance, culminating it all on Saturday night.

It’s the second year since the pandemic that students will enjoy dancing the night away on the football field. In 2020, the dance was actually on the field, and this year the dance is on the new Beaver Stadium’s south plaza.

Homecoming Week was highly anticipated as students geared up for events.

Overall theme for the high school students was “Decades,” with each class also having a theme: freshmen, 1960s; sophomores, 2000s; juniors, 1980s; and seniors, future.

Monday was Adam Sandler Day with students taking inspiration from Sandler’s fashion style, with students dressing in comfort in oversized mixed-matched clothing.

Over the weekend, my high school junior daughter asked me to drive her to Goodwill to find a pair or long, sloppy basketball shorts and an oversized Marvel Avengers T-shirt.

All classes began float building on Monday, each with a different theme and each being built every day this week after school in their designated locations. Each class has a theme, but I won’t spoil it in anticipation of the Homecoming Parade.

Tuesday was Class Colors Day. For my junior, the color was purple, so she wore a purple Prince “Purple Rain” T-shirt.

Wednesday, Pajama Day, was actually an eLearning Day (What a way to kill the fun vibes on Homecoming week) Next year, maybe there will be better planning so there isn’t an eLearning day during Homecoming week.

Today is Minion Day, so my daughter put on a yellow Minion suit to wear to school today. My daughter actually rode the school bus in a Minion costume. If you don’t know, Minions are yellow and wear black gloves, black boots, metal goggles for their number of eyes and blue-jean overall with Gru’s emblem on the front, like in the “Despicable Me” series.

Friday is Black and Gold Spirit Day, with students encouraged to wear their new Homecoming logo T-shirts for each class, and other spirit wear.

The next activity will be the Mini Olympics/Pep Session on Friday, for NHS students only, at The Mill.

The excitement builds all week, leading up to Friday’s Homecoming Parade, where each class will show off their themed float-building skills. (Students will be released 30 minutes early, at 3:10 p.m., for the parade which steps off at 4 p.m., or maybe a little early, according to messages that went out to parents). The parade route will travel west on Monument Street, south on 16th Street, west on Logan Street, north on Ninth Street and east on Monument Street, back to the starting place.

Besides each of the class floats, the parade usually features all of the high school athletic teams, choirs, marching band, school clubs and more.

Plus, the NHS Alumni Association members will have a parade entry.

Returning NHS alumni to Homecoming will find NHS’s new football stadium just behind NHS.

The Homecoming football game, Noblesville Millers vs. Franklin Central, will be at 7:30 p.m. (Note that the football games the rest of the season start at 7 p.m.) Fans’ $7 general admission game tickets (tickets were $6 in 2021) are available online at gofan.co.

The football team, cheerleaders, trainers, managers and coaches from the 50-year class (Class of 1973) will be honored at halftime of the football game, said NHS Alumni board president Peggy Beaver, who graduated in the class of 1972. She said NHS class of 1973 graduates will be admitted free and will have reserved seats at the southwest corner of the stadium.

While the NHS Alumni Association will be riding in the Homecoming Parade, the group did not plan any other after-game activities or gatherings. Another item to note, Beaver said, “Adriene’s Flowers is bringing back the traditional ‘Miller’ corsage that we all wore back when I was in high school.” The corsage is yellow with a black “N” in the center, she said. “All the gals from the alumni board riding in the parade will be wearing one, a gift from Board member Tom Gang, for alums Terri Kennedy, Deb Bastin and myself (those riding in the parade),” she said. Adriene’s Flowers was taking orders this week for the black and gold Miller corsage.

The final event of Homecoming Week is the dance. There is lots of buzz this year — about what to wear and who’s going with who, including a lot of friend groups — in anticipation of Saturday’s Homecoming Dance, for which $10 tickets went on sale Monday. About 1,700 to 1,800 are anticipated to attend the dance.

I imagine there will be a lot of high school students posing for photos on Saturday around the Courthouse Square, a location that has become very popular for both amateur and professional photographers.

Learn more about what’s going on in the district during the next Noblesville Schools Table Talk, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at Noblesville Educational Services Center.

Contact Betsy Reason at betsy@thetimes24-7.com.