Homecoming week at Biddeford High School has always been a beloved and traditional competition between the classes. This year, however, the week has changed substantially, as the competitive nature was completely obliterated. Instead, a Tiger Pride Award was set forth, rewarding the class that exhibited the most Tiger Pride throughout the week. These changes, like everything, have their reasons, some of which I agree with. However, my feelings are consumed by nostalgia, as I miss the old homecoming weeks, the memories made, and the overwhelming amount of pride that they created. I can’t help but feel that I missed out on my final homecoming week, and I know that the majority of my senior peers feel the same way. Don’t get me wrong, we get it, there were problems that arose from homecoming week, but even more problems arise without it. We think about what our finally–perfected skit would’ve looked like; we think about waiting for the morning announcements to finally tell us who won the previous events; we miss parents and grandparents coming to watch us compete in what would’ve been our last homecoming week.

On the bright side, I think that the week was definitely more positive overall. Although I believe that Tiger Pride was a little more forced instead of spontaneous, probably a result of the new Tiger Pride Award, there was definitely less drama that often came up in past years. This week promoted a much better message of positivity, which seemed to be the primary reason for the evolution of homecoming week. Instead of competing, we were supporting eachother, an essential part of pride. However, I think that in this case, the few problems that occurred during previous homecoming weeks were irrelevant to all of the good that it brought. It used to bring class unity, an unbelievable amount of Tiger Pride, and most importantly, a week that stole probably fifty–percent of the memories made in high school.

Sadly, it’s all gone and unfortunately irreplaceable for us seniors, who will never be able to get our last homecoming week back. And I know that I’ve written about Biddeford tradition before and how we are usually unnecessarily adamant about retaining them, but in this case I wish we would’ve been more persistent. A change to graduation date or project sunrise is insignificant because we will still graduate and still spend a whole night with the people we grew up with, but the “changes” to homecoming week weren’t really changes at all. What happened to homecoming week was more of a complete abolition of tradition. What makes this whole thing worse it that these traditions, although seemingly frivolous to an outsider, were cherished by the whole community. We used to be different and certainly not average when it came to our homecoming festivities, but now we are just like everyone else, something that Biddeford has never been known for.