Students gathered throughout the week to compete for the homecoming spirit cup, eat food and find out who the top five homecoming king and queen candidates were.
Jalen Lewis, John Austin Schaudel, Pishoi Rafaile, Dadi Hamel and Ryan Pulido were announced on Monday at the Homecoming Kick Off event as the five king candidates being represented on the court. Chelsea Lawson, Madelyn Chidester, Ashley Herrera, Jacqueline Ho, and Caelan Svartz are the queen candidates.
The final king and queen winners will be announced at the game on Saturday.
The Residence Hall Association collaborated with Homecoming to prepare the booths with stations for students to visit.
“RHA collabs with Homecoming every year,” said American Sign Language and English interpreting senior Hannah Matthews. “This year, RHA was able to provide food and got our hall councils involved by creating booths for fun activities.”
Students received a stamp at each station they participated and were able to win a shirt after getting four stamps.
The carnival style set up of the event had the booths on the outer rim of the Houston Room, with the main stage and DJ based in the center.
“The event was really cool and the light looked great on the stage,” said journalism freshman Kylee Whitaker. “The food and the games were great as well.”
Tuesday’s events included The Cougar Games in Lynn Eusan Park and Strut Your Stuff in the Houston Room.
The Cougar Games consisted of an obstacle course, tug-of-war, and relay races. The winning team from each activity received points used to determine the winner of the entire competition, which was ultimately Alpha Sigma Phi and Delta Zeta.
Points from winning The Cougar Games were calculated in finalizing which team will win the coveted spirit cup, an award is given to the homecoming team that gained the most points from their competition wins during homecoming week.
“The Cougar Games is a first-year event,” said Homecoming Chair Anthony Salcido. “It used to just be construction (referring to the CAN-Struction event from years past), which we still have going on, but we wanted to reach out and get more students involved in activities throughout the event, so we added a bunch of field day activities.”
Despite the cold weather at the outdoor event, many participants were still positive and enjoyed the event.
“Cougar Games was so fun and showed every organizations’ school spirit,” said exploratory studies freshman Caroline Hussey.
Strut Your Stuff is the annual homecoming week talent show that features dance performances and skits from competing homecoming teams. Performances this year were based on homecoming’s theme of Be Someone.
Alpha Sigma Phi and Delta Zeta ultimately won first place from the competing performances, which was the team’s second win of the day.
“I’ve been doing this for three years now. It’s been so great,” said broadcast journalism senior and Alpha Sigma Phi member Rheen Pascal. “I love Alpha Sig, dancing, choreographing, everything, really just fulfills my heart.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Alpha Sigma Phi won Strut Your Stuff last year.