With one homecoming assembly down and homecoming dress-up week in full swing, students and staff alike are already looking forward to the primary homecoming events: the game, crowning royalty, and the dance. This year, for the first time in recent memory, those events will be split between weekends. 

With the school’s administrative team planning homecoming, students are constantly wondering why the dance is placed so inconveniently; a week after the September 27 football game. What many students fail to realize is the limited options that the planning team faces. The team in charge of planning homecoming always aims for the weeks in between the first and last home games, but the ideal dates were all occupied by calendar or facilities conflicts. 

The Huskies’ football team is home against Gull Lake on Friday the 27th, but the PN Marching Band is hosting their own (pre-planned) marching invitational the next day, creating a double conflict: firstly, if the dance were on the 28th, the Huskies who are part of the marching band would be unable to attend it for the full duration. Second, the first conflict couldn’t take place anyway because there would be nowhere to host the homecoming dance. 

Portage Northern’s football team goes away for a game against St. Joseph on October 4, summoning yet another double conflict. St. Joseph is nearly an hour drive from Portage Northern. Not every student can drive, and for their parents and the students who can, the hour-long trip to one of the most important football games of the year is just too inconvenient. Moreover, the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah takes place from the second of October to the fourth, meaning the homecoming football game cannot legally be placed on the 4th. 

Since an away game won’t work, the next available home game becomes a target. On October 11, Portage Northern will host Portage Central in the most intense rivalry game of the year. Many think this game shines through as the perfect date for homecoming, but there’s one inevitable factor that administrators must include. Being direct rivals, Northern and Central games tend to get heated and nearly violent in some cases. Considering this fact, October 11th was not decided to be Northern’s homecoming game. 

After all of these limitations and conflicts, “the only real option we had with dates was to do the dance a week later than one of the games,” says student senate adviser Joseph Wood. 

These limitations provoke a question: why avoid the year’s first home game on September 6th? After all, the purpose of homecoming is to start the year off strong in celebration of the first home football game, and in hindsight, it was a good matchup and exciting victory against a tough Midland team. In response, Wood shared that, “the planning committee simply wouldn’t have the proper time or resources to plan a dance on the second week of school.”

While the break between the game and the dance is non-traditional and has been the topic of controversy among some students, other students, such as freshman Eliana Johnson, see the break between the game and dance as, “a good chance to relax.”

After a long process of sorting through each and every conflict, the Portage Northern administrative team has remained firm in the decision that the homecoming football game and crowning of royalty will take place on Friday, September 27 at 7:00 pm, and the dance will follow on Saturday, October 5th at 8:30 pm.