To wrap up homecoming week, campus students and teachers headed over to the FC Gym for a rally, Oct. 25, at the end of the school day. In addition to finalizing the week’s festivities, the rally was held to pump students up for FC’s 29th annual homecoming game against Riverdale Christian High School, Oct. 25, on the varsity field. Although the actual game will begin at 7 p.m., the festivities will commence at 6:30 p.m. with the introduction of the freshman, sophomore and junior princess nominees.

In accordance with the yearly tradition, class floats will be displayed at the game and judged during the third quarter. With the 2013 theme being “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s homecoming!”, the freshman class chose Power Rangers, and the sophomores selected the Incredibles. The juniors decided on Avengers, and the seniors chose Batman.

Throughout the week, students have participated in dress-up days, such as Marvel Monday (superheroes), Sports Day, PJ Day and Fake Injury Day. Although every Friday is an FC school spirit day, students today dressed in excessive school spirit wear to show their support for the football team as homecoming night pumps everyone up beyond the normal level of excitement.

Beginning with the Princess Pageant on Tuesday, the week was jam-packed with events leading up to Friday night’s game. The Queen Pageant was held Wednesday during chapel, the king pageant with the much-anticipated King Dance replaced chapel on Thursday, and the rally on Friday wrapped up the pre-homecoming festivities.

As a part of FC student leadership, freshman Jarrod Markarian looked forward to the rally because of the role it played in stirring up excitement in the student body.

“I’m looking forward to the rallies because I just want everyone to get excited about homecoming,” Markarian said. “Hopefully everyone is excited and jumping around and everyone will have a lot of school spirit. We’re just hoping to get everyone pumped up for homecoming.”

Even more than the rally, though, Markarian looks forward to the homecoming game, and the traditions that come with that every year, especially the class floats.

“I’m excited for homecoming because of the floats, and I think they’re going to be really fun,” Markarian said. “I’m looking forward to seeing all of the ideas and how they all came together.”

Accompanied by the color guard squad, FC’s percussion band, led by campus music director Michael Ogdon, kicked off the rally, using their performance in front of the student body as preparation for their routine tonight. After the band finished playing, each class section was required to make a cheer and a winner of that competition was determined by the classes’ loudness, creativity and spirit.

Marissa Jonigan, ’16, enjoyed the rally today because her class was more excited and engaged than usual, and because the sophomores won the overall competition.

“My favorite thing about rallies is the competition between the classes,” Jonigan said. “My class, the sophomores, won the competition, and that was fun because we don’t usually have a lot of spirit. Today was a pretty good turnout with people smiling and getting into it.”

As has become the custom for FC rallies, the classes competed in a game related to the sport the rally promoted, in this case football. For this competition, ten members from each class were chosen to lie head-to-toe and pass a football from one side of the line to the other without dropping the ball or throwing it. Although the results were close, the sophomores took the victory.

Cheerleaders gave the student body just a small taste of the school spirit by leading students in the nuthouse’s “RED HOT!” cheer, and the football team’s seniors made their way down to the floor to be introduced and interviewed about their hopes and expectations for the night.

As defensive back and quarterback, sophomore Tyler Breedlove enjoyed the rally, but more than that, he is looking forward to the game tonight against Riverdale.

“I really enjoy everyone being together, and today was made special by the sophomores winning the rally competition,” Breedlove said. “I’ve just been trying to get through the day so that we can play the football game tonight. I want to win!

Although football is what he is most excited about tonight, he is also excited to see his sister, Alli, ’17, in the homecoming court, and hopes that she takes the title of 2013 sophomore princess.

“I’m really looking forward to the game and hopefully my sister winning sophomore princess,” Breedlove said. “I don’t want to be overconfident, but I think we’re going to win tonight.”

Senior Amanda Menes was entertained by the different activities throughout the rally. Menes enjoyed the atmosphere of the event, feeling pumped from all the class spirit.

“I thought the rally was really exciting,” Menes said. “It got me pumped up for the homecoming game tonight. I thought the game was pretty funny and having to make up a cheer for our classes was a good idea. Overall I thought it was good preparation for homecoming tonight.”

With the addition of Roho the spirit monkey at the rallies, Jimmy Chang, ’14, enjoyed today’s rally more than usual. Chang saw the rally as a great way to get prepared for homecoming.

“The rally was fun,” Chang said. “I like that we have the spirit monkey Roho, now. I think it gives people more incentive to be really spirited. We didn’t win Roho this time but we’ll get him back at the next rally. I thought the rally was a great way to prepare everyone for homecoming tonight.”

This writer can be reached on Twitter at @JennaWeimer42. Follow The Feather via Twitter: @thefeather.

For more information on homecoming, see the Oct. 25 article Dress-up days celebrate homecoming (VIDEO, PODCAST).