Keeping Frederick’s Homecoming Parade Afloat
Seniors Thomas Beeker and Bethany Parker, as well as junior Giada DeJulio rehearse before the Homecoming Parade on the outline of the theatre float in the studio theater at Frederick High. The theatre float will be one of many in this year’s Homecoming Parade which takes place on Friday, October 1. “The float this year is really unique compared to past years. This year we are going to be advertising both our fall and our spring show, so we got to do like a half and half type of thing, which is really fun and we got to take a lot of creative liberty with that,” says Thomas Beeker, a senior at Frederick High School and the theatre float coordinator.
October 1, 2021
On Friday, October 1, Frederick High’s Homecoming Parade will take place starting at 5:00 pm at Thunder Valley, and will end around 5:30 pm at Frederick High School. Between being thrown out of typical practice by the cancellation of last year’s parade due to the coronavirus and new staff members in charge of managing the parade, there have been some challenges that FHS has had to overcome to make this year’s parade successful.
This year, each graduating class was assigned class advisors to help coordinate a plan for creating a class float for the parade. Unfortunately, one of the challenges this year that the freshman and junior class advisors faced was getting enough students interested in helping with the creation of the float.
“Unfortunately due to lack of interest, we were unable to pull together a junior class float for this year’s Homecoming parade,” says Ms. Keri Aasmundstad, a math teacher at Frederick High and one of the junior class advisors. “Our hope is that this will be something that builds momentum over the next year or two so that each class is represented in a fun way and provides every student here at FHS the opportunity to participate and share their school spirit with our community,” she added.
While there weren’t enough students in the freshman and junior classes interested in the parade float, it was a different story for the sophomore and senior classes.
“We have had a ton of people send in permission slips. I [think] we probably have around 15 to 20 kids now who have sent in their permission slips to work on the float and be a part of that,” said Mrs. Leah Zanussi, the business teacher at Frederick High and one of the sophomore class advisors.
Other Frederick clubs and extracurriculars will also be part of the parade. The Frederick Theatre Department will have a float in this year’s homecoming parade, and while there were some challenges around this year’s float, the Theatre Team has a very creative design for their float that will allow them to advertise both shows that they will be performing for the community.
“Figuring out the measurements of the trailer took a little bit, and I think we struggled with how narrow [the trailer] is,” said Giada DeJulio, a junior at Frederick High.
“Getting everyone together and coming up with an effective design were also some challenges we faced,” added Bethany Parker, a senior at Frederick High.
While other groups at Frederick High have encountered challenges in putting their floats together for this year’s parade, that hasn’t been the case for the float that will represent the Boys and Girls Basketball teams in this year’s parade.
“[There haven’t been] any major challenges, [and] it’s actually been a little easier for us because we are doing it together with the Girls [Basketball teams], which we’ve done before, but just not lately, so we are combining with the girls to do it, [and that way] we have both the girls coaches and the guys coaches to help to get it organized and get everything ready,” said Coach Enoch Miller, the Head Boys Basketball Coach and a PE/Health teacher at Frederick High. “Both of the coaches that are heading it up are taking off work tomorrow so they are able to do a lot of the work tomorrow morning,” he added.
