When homecoming week rolls around for Travelers Rest High School, there is a certain excitement that buzzes through the school. Yet when the week begins, so does the class rivalries. As float building starts, students become filled with pride to make their float the best, and have bragging rights for the rest of the year. With this pride comes an overwhelming amount of paranoia. Float building is always an experience that many look forward to, to showcase their class’ pride.
Student council has been in charge of this event for many years and with it does come a set of rules. Every year, each grade is given $200 to buy supplies for their float. Then if they need to, grades can have certain fundraisers to make more money. For example,  freshmen, sophomores, and juniors sold t-shirts this year to collect more money. Mr. Nolan and Ms. McCarrell, the supervisors of student council, take part in helping make sure all rules are followed during the competition. When sophomore student council member Alliah Woodard was asked about her float building experience, she said that when she saw her float on Main Street, she “felt such relief.”

The judging committee is a hand-picked group of teachers, family, and friends of the school. On Thursday night, the parade takes place in downtown Travelers Rest. Since the theme this year was Disney parks, the freshmen had the theme of Hollywood Studios, sophomores had Animal Kingdom, juniors had Epcot, and the seniors had Magic Kingdom. Float building is taken very seriously by the students of Travelers Rest High School and many spend their whole homecoming week doing nothing other than working on their floats. These late nights consist of painting, nailing, drilling, and every other technique possible to make their float look great. When the parade took place Thursday night, downtown Travelers Rest streets were filled with people sitting in lawn chairs looking onto the parade.

As Friday afternoon rolled around and the Alma Mater played, homecoming week had come to an end. After the results finally came in at that night’s football game, seniors took home the gold, winning both the spirit rock and stick, while coming in second in the float competition. Senior Alex Dodd said that he will miss float building and even though the seniors didn’t place first in that specific category, it was “a good ending point for [their] senior class.” The sophomores came in second overall and won the entire float building competition, while the juniors came in third and freshmen came in last.

So as the paint and glue is stored away, and the numerous ideas of what could have been done are still whirling in their brains, the student body of TR will have to wait until next year for another week of never-ending memories that is homecoming.