High school celebrates homecoming

The Outlaws celebrated homecoming last Friday with the crowning of King Kanoa James and Queen Jena Rickards. The pair and their court paraded through Reed Stadium during halftime of the Outlaws football game (see related story, page 7).

Festivities kicked off with the traditional Sisters High School Homecoming Parade.

Parade highlights each year are the floats created by members of the school's four classes and the honoring of the homecoming princes and princesses.

This year's theme was "Welcome to the Jungle," with floats depicting popular books and movies. The seniors chose "Lord of the Flies." The juniors' float was representative of "Indiana Jones." The sophomores selected "Tarzan," and the freshman float symbolized "The Lion King."

According to Kelsey Price, the school's leadership and activities director, each float is judged on creativity, the use of theme and neatness and cleanliness, and each class receives points for its float. The points are added towards the composite score the class earns from participating in various competitions throughout the year. At the end of the year, the class with the highest number of points is awarded a prize.

Along with its float each class also creates a mural at the school in keeping with the theme for which points also are awarded.

"It's a great building tool for the classes to come together and work on a project. Usually, they have a short time to do it, because they find out the theme about a week before. They really have to come together and work hard to put together their float and mural," said Price.

The homecoming prince and princess from the freshman, sophomore and junior classes and the five homecoming princes and five princesses from the senior class also ride in the parade. This year's court rode in Mustangs, both vintage and new, owned and driven by members of the Deschutes County Mustangs club.

The school's cheerleaders who were dancing to "Jungle Boogie," a group of children from SOAR (Sisters Organization for Activities and Recreation) and school district superintendent Elaine Drakulich also rode in the parade.

The event was organized by a team of students from the school's leadership class.

"It was really stressful, considering we had to do so much and we'd never done anything like this before," said sophomore Sara Marcus, one of the team members.

According to Marcus, getting the verbal permit from the city to use Hood Avenue for the parade was the team's greatest challenge.

"It was tricky because we couldn't get a hold of the city and they tried to just go around about it, and it was very confusing for us," said Marcus, noting that when the city did not return the students' telephone calls junior Andrew Lessar went to the city in person to attain the permit.

In the end everything came together in perfect harmony.

"It's very relaxing now that it's over," said Marcus, who told The Nugget she plans to write a book for next year's organizers. "I'm going to leave it there for them to keep forever."

The homecoming king and queen, who are always members of the senior class, are chosen by a vote of the school's student body.

The king and queen are crowned each year during half-time at the homecoming football game. On Friday night Kanoa James was crowned this year's king and Jena Rickards was dubbed queen.

"I'm flattered. I can't believe my peers would think of me like that. Any one (of the princes and princesses) was completely in the running," said Rickards.

In addition to James and Rickards, members of this year's homecoming court are: Kelly Cole and Erik Carlson, freshman prince and princess; Holden Sellentin and Alyssa Eby, sophomore prince and princess; Grant Crossgrove and Brook Rosauer, junior prince and princess; Taylor Davenport, Blake Ehr, Carroll Gryder and Andrew Wilson, senior princes; and Ryanne Conrads, Ashlee Garau, Rachael Tenneson and Kali Ulmer, senior princesses.