//Camila Fowler and Keturah Widhelm//

Photo Courtesy of Cade Rolofson, Kailey Carpenter, and Delaney Sherman

This year’s Homecoming week was one like never before. When Homecoming was postponed to next semester, Vista students took the tradition into their own hands. Students celebrated Homecoming on their own time and in their own homes, thus acting as a Homecoming away from home.

Students approached the night as they would any other Homecoming dance: with photos, dinner, a makeshift version of the dance and typical post-dance activities. 

“The biggest thing about Homecoming is being with your friends, and it doesn’t really matter where you go or what you do,” Delaney Sherman, 11, said. 

The group bounced from house to house, and a pinnacle of the night was taking photos at Highlands Ranch Mansion. They put a personalized twist on their group photos. 

“We decided that [the] boys were going to wear jerseys and girls were going to match their jerseys,” Sherman said. “We just did it because we wanted to make the school year as normal as possible.”

Going into freshman year with the new COVID-19 schedule is very different, especially for the class of 2024. This new adaptation of high school will affect this year’s Homecoming event for the entire freshman class.

“We decided [to have an at-home Homecoming] because freshman Homecoming is kind of a big deal, and we didn’t get to have one. It’s still not a normal Homecoming, but we decided to have one,” Makayla Fitch, 9, said. “It’s kind of hard because visually it’s [my] first experience of highschool, and I still don’t know what highschool is like.”

Fitch’s group went to her house for dinner, pictures and fun decorations. This is a harsh reality, especially for freshmen who haven’t had that first real Homecoming experience. The freshman at Mountain Vista high school had optimistic ideals for the new schedule and made an at-home Homecoming a fun experience.

“We had one because we just needed to take our minds off of the hybrid year and enjoy each other’s company like we would before everything went sideways,” Collin Ingram, 10, said. “My favorite part was explaining to the Chick-fil-A employee why we were all dressed up.”

Ingram’s group did a very low key, but “magical” at-home Homecoming. As sophomores, the group had priorly experienced their first real Homecoming. The sense of unity and togetherness in a strange time brought this group together for a fun night.

A Vista sponsored Homecoming dance still is in the works, but for now, these student celebrations will continue to supplement the traditional dance throughout the fall. 

As a substitute for the last Homecoming of their high school careers, senior Cade Rolofson and his friends ate at the Mexican restaurant, El Jefe. After, the group returned to one of their houses with ice cream on their minds. 

“It was so funny because we all forgot to bring our change of shoes so we all were in our comfy clothes [wearing] our dress shoes and heels,” Cade Rolofson, 12, said. “Obviously it was different, but we thought it would keep us in the spirit of the whole week and make our senior year special.”