Homecoming Festival & Bonfire on Thursday Night

It’s Homecoming Week in Huntington UFSD and that means it’s time to celebrate as a community at the annual Homecoming Festival. This year’s big event is this Thursday night at Huntington High School beginning at 6:30 p.m. Everyone is invited.

The event includes games, prizes, food, refreshments, music, live performances and a huge bonfire in the high school parking lot. Students of all ages are invited along with their parents.

The Huntington Booster Club apparel trailer will be on the scene and high school clubs will be manning booths with games and food and refreshments. Vocal and dance performances will be featured.

“I’m super excited for homecoming and all the events leading up to it,” said Elizabeth James, vice president of the high school’s student government as well as the Class of 2025. “It’s my last homecoming as a Blue Devil, which is very bittersweet, but I know it’s going to be a great one! I have booths planned for two clubs at bonfire: student government, where we’re selling hot chocolate and National Honor Society, where we’re selling homecoming tee shirts! As for homecoming, we’re all super excited to build the float. Our theme is ‘Children’s Books’ this year, and the senior float is ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar.’”

Past festivals have drawn crowds as big as 2,000. With good weather, this week’s gathering is expected to be similarly large.

The Homecoming Day celebration began in earnest on Monday of this week. “It starts off with Spirit Week and then Thursday night is really where things kick-off,” said senior Vincenza Garofalo, who handles public relations for the student government. “There’s the bonfire where the whole district gets together to celebrate homecoming. It’s really nice to see students of all grades at the bonfire and it has always excited me for the rest of the week. Float day is a busy one, but having the gym classes come out during the day is such a big help for us. The day is cut short for a pep rally and then the work on the floats continues after pep rally and this is where we get to see our hard work coming together.”

Friday afternoon’s pep rally will see fall varsity teams introduced to the crowd. Teams are able to perform short three minute skits if they so desire, along with performances by the Ready Step team, marching band, United Amigos, chamber choir and Highsteppers dance team.

“Pep rally is super fun,” Ms. Garofalo said. “All of the varsity sports and the marching band put on a show for the rest of the school. I’ll be dancing with the varsity tennis team this year. Saturday is a long one, but it’s so worth it in the end. The day starts off with the judging of the floats and we get to show off our hard work at the parade. The homecoming football game has to be one of the biggest football games of the season. The entire week is really just a buildup to the game, but that’s what makes it fun. At halftime we breakdown the floats and it might be a little bittersweet but at least we got to do it together these past three years.”