Niles West’s annual Homeroom Competitions are scheduled to begin this week and continue until the final competition at the Winter Pep Rally on Friday, Dec. 10.

Only one new competition will be held each week until the final competition, which will consist of one homeroom per grade level competing in front of the entire school at the Winter Pep Rally for the notorious trophy with “Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em” robots on the top.

“Basically it’s a series of challenges for homerooms to compete with each other,” said Homeroom Competition coordinator Anthony Serafini.  “It’s a chance for the homerooms to band together for a common event.  It’s just a nice way to join [the homerooms] because of the [separated] girls and boys’ homerooms.”

All homerooms are matched to compete against a new homeroom every week according to the bracket at http://fahrenbacher.com/homeroom/index.php.  It is a single elimination competition, so only one winner will continue each week.

Homerooms that choose not to participate will forfeit to their competitors and be eliminated from the competition, Serafini said.

Some events will be the same as last year such as the Paper Airplane Contest, Waiter Race, Turkey Bowl, and Balloon Relay Race, but some events will be brand new, said Serafini.

This week’s competition will be the Balloon Relay Race, in which students will pass a balloon to each other using their feet as fast as they can.