Walking in the school for my last ever homecoming at West wasn’t the sad last episode of a sitcom I thought it would be. It just felt normal. I had gotten there early so there wasn’t as much of a line and I was moved through pretty quick. I turned the hall to see the decorations that were significantly better than last year. I thought the decorations were pretty solid, with the large candy cane tubes, balloons wrapped like candy, and the little gingerbread houses outside the door.

The music, for the most part, was more of the same, but pleasing to begin with. Remixed old 2007 pop songs are guaranteed to often result in a crowd of teenagers dancing and laughing, but unfortunately, as more kids arrived the music got worse. That’s just my opinion. Overall, the crowd seemed to enjoy the loud music, but it’s personally not to my liking.

While observing homecoming from a distance with my NWN camera, I realized that homecoming is like a rave without the benefit of anonymity and with nicer clothing. It’s hours of jumping up and down to fast-paced music where you can’t truly let yourself go because everyone around you knows you, and could easily tease you on Monday for your horrible dancing or worse, take a video of you to spread around. It’s an interesting environment to be sure, and one I’m not entirely comfortable with.

As I walked through a cloud of horribly strong cologne, I entered the wrestling gym and it was definitely nicer than years past: bowls of candy, actual movie theater popcorn in bags instead of skinny pop in a red cup. The tables were decorated nicely as well, definitely outdoing the past few years.

During the homecoming court’s parade around the stage they threw out glowing batons and there was a large confetti burst, which was either at the last homecoming and I don’t remember, or it was brand new. Either way, I liked the nice touch to send off the homecoming court.

The event was nicely planned and I enjoyed it more than in the past, even when being unable to dance. I don’t necessarily like the idea or concept of how we hold our homecoming, but the students were enjoying themselves, the music was better than in years past, and it was clearly a win in the Niles West events’ books.