School spirit is essential to the high school experience and culture of Dripping Springs. School traditions are what create lasting memories that many of us will look back on and remember our high school experience by. Homecoming week is one of those traditions that may seem silly at the time, but incredibly fun to look back on. This year, the Homecoming spirit week themes are all part of a central theme: “Golden Hour Glow.” What stops a lot of people from dressing up for Homecoming week is the lack of ideas on what to wear. But look no further because in this article we talk all things school spirit and tell you all about our homecoming themes.
Lots of people simply just ignore the homecoming dress up themes due to a lack of school spirit. Personally, we think school could be more exciting if people participated more actively in school spirit week. The overarching theme of the homecoming dance being Golden Hour Glow gives students a lot of freedom in their outfit choices. The color palette is warm colors like yellow, orange, pink and white.
“I think I do [have a lot of school spirit],” student body president Jackson McClure said. “When I first got here I didn’t [have school spirit], but after being an officer and in a lot of different positions it made me realize how important school spirit is. It’s hard to get people to bring out their school spirit but when you do it can make the vibe of every football game or school activity so much better, so I’m a big advocate for it for sure.”
Part of the reason that students don’t have school spirit is because of the fact that they don’t know how to participate in school activities or events. Luckily, we have some ideas that will help you have fun with the themes. For Tuesday’s theme, “Golden Icons,” you get to dress up as your favorite celebrity! You can keep it simple and just wear merch, or go all out and recreate a certain celebrity’s full outfit. Whether your idol is an athlete, actor, singer or anything in between, there’s definitely something you can do to be on theme.
“I think the number one thing is showing up to things and following the themes,” McClure said. “If there’s a dress up day, actually dress up and follow it. For football games, go in your best gear, be loud and support each other. Use your voice to cheer at school events and have pride in the school rather than it being considered weird.”
It’s not always easy deciding what students should wear and would be excited about for spirit week and football game themes. This year, the student council implemented a way for students’ voices to be heard in the decision making process. Wednesday’s theme, “Sunrise and Sunset,” splits the school up. It’s pretty different compared to the other themes. Upperclassmen wear dark
colors and the underclassmen wear pastels. Make sure you wear your grade’s colors, and bring a healthy heaping of competition to Spirit Week!
“So this year we started something new, a thing called the spirit round table,” student council sponsor Sarah Blakely said. “The spirit round table is made up of the student council officers and two representatives from the sports teams, dance, cheer and band. They sat down with their sponsors or coaches, and decided the themes for the football games. We did that because we didn’t want it to be a mystery and we are very open about how this process is occurring. We want more students involved. When you have more people who have a buy into the decision, you have more people supporting it at the base.”
Understanding how to show school spirit is important to improving the school community, and for many, the high school experience. On Thursday, the theme is “The Golden Days.” Have a blast from the past with a decades theme. You can be a Flapper from the 20s, try the minimalistic trends of the 90s or embrace the y2k style of the 2000s. You can still experience your favorite decades even without living through them!
“It’s not just about Homecoming,” Blakely said. “It’s about traditions in general, whether they’re old traditions or new traditions. Traditions are what continue, and they feed from one generation to the next, to the next, and even in your graduates it’s going to create a continued sense of community.”
For Friday’s theme, we’re getting back to the basics with “Gold Level Spirit.” For this theme you can celebrate school spirit by wearing maroon and gold! If you’re on a sports team or involved with anything else in school, you can also wear an outfit that represents your activity.
“I’m always for increasing school spirit and that sense of belonging in any way that we can,” Blakely said. “We’re all tigers, this is tiger nation. I feel like we do a really good job at coming together as a community when we need to. That’s the important thing, right? That we rally as a community, we support ourselves, we support tigers, we do what we need to do.”