Ahead of the 2025-26 school year, the senior class student council worked to reinstate a homecoming court at Conestoga, a tradition that ended around six years ago.

Homecoming Court is a group of students chosen by the student body to represent the school at the annual homecoming dance. The 2025 court consisted of nine seniors: Leo Brown, Dez Fritz, Charlotte Garcia, Shane Harley, Arni Kende, Jonathan Lee, class vice president Lexi Lenehan, Emily Todd and class president Steven Wiechecki. The senior class chose the court through peer nominations. Student Council officially announced the winning members at the pep rally on Sept. 19, and winners received homecoming court sashes and free tickets to the homecoming dance on Sept. 20. At the dance, Brown and Todd, the two members of the court who had received the most nominations overall, were announced as Homecoming Royalty, with the responsibility of promoting school spirit.

“We brought (Homecoming Court) back because a lot of the upperclassmen weren’t going (to it), and it was more of just a freshman dance. The whole student council came together collectively, and we just decided, ‘What’s a way to finally get everyone back at the dance (and) make it more exciting again?’” Wiechecki said. “When everyone’s more involved in something like Homecoming and the whole school’s united in one thing, everyone’s spirited to be a Conestoga pioneer.”

The process of reinstating Homecoming Court began back in April. After first getting the idea approved by student council adviser Elizabeth Gallo, Student Council submitted initial proposals to principal Dr. Amy Meisinger and student activities administrator Dr. Nicole Jolly. After several rounds of meetings and follow-up proposals, school administration officially approved the court in June.

“We had to fix a lot with the name, (since) we can’t call it ‘king and queen.’ And then we weren’t really able to have (only) two people selected, so we kind of decided they would pick (10) among themselves,” Wiechecki said. “And then another thing was that we can’t have people vote for five girls and five boys, it should be anyone.”

Student Council first announced the return of Homecoming Court on Aug. 1 through the instagram account @virtualstoga. From Sept. 8-10, senior class members were able to nominate up to three students for the court. During the voting process, students wrote about how the nominee embodied school spirit and affected them in a positive way. Following the nomination period, Student Council submitted the student names with the most votes to administration for academic and discipline review and to ensure the students participated in at least one extracurricular or community activity. Student Council notified winners through email on Sept. 15 and gave the students the chance to accept or reject their nomination.

“I wasn’t really a part of the nomination process because I knew I wanted to be on the court,” Lenehan said. “I told a few of my friends to vote for me, but to know that other people in the class voted for me means a lot, because the people who win are the people who go to all the sports games, go to all the music events, really show out for all the spirit days. And it just meant a lot to learn that I was one of those people.”

In addition to bringing back Homecoming Court, student council announced that Homecoming would be an “all-school dance” this year. Although the dance had been open to all grades in past years, the majority of attendees were freshmen. This year, Student Council focused on encouraging all grades to attend Homecoming through the creation of the court and promoting spirit days.

“Before this year, (Homecoming) was seen as something for just freshmen, (but) I think people are going to want to go more now,” Harley said. “At least from what I’ve heard, people of different grades are definitely planning to attend more (this year) than they would have in the past.”

On Saturday, Sept. 20, over 1,100 students across all grades attended the homecoming dance. According to Lenehan, following this success, Student Council made plans for a possible Prom Court and continuing Homecoming Court in future years.

“With the turnout of this homecoming court, and the fact that our grade was pretty involved, I think Prom Court would probably be something similar to Homecoming Court,” Lenehan said. “We’ve talked to the junior student council, and they’re into (continuing the court) too. This is gonna be a tradition now, and I’m glad we were the class that brought this back.”

Vanessa Chen can be reached at [email protected].