With homecoming season in full swing, Southern Lehigh High School’s Student Council worked hard since the first week of school to ensure all finishing touches were in place before the dance on October 15th.

Student Council advisor Mr. Troy Ruch has been working with students planning Southern Lehigh’s homecoming dances for many years. 

“I’ve been doing it for so long that there’s a level of familiarity that I kind of have an expectation of what we’re going to do,” Mr. Ruch said. “If the students have any other ideas they can bring them up, but ultimately it runs itself.” 

With fewer COVID-19 restrictions, the homecoming dance was indoors this year for the first time since the lockdown. This allowed the opportunity for more students to come to the dance and more activities available for them to enjoy, such as corn-hole boards and ping-pong.. 

“The dance is the biggest activity, but we’ll have some other activities for students to do,” Mr. Ruch said. “Just something [so] if people want to step away from the dance, they have the ability to do something else.” 

A variety of food and drinks were also available to students to enjoy when they needed a break from dancing.

“There’s desserts, pizza, a variety of soft pretzels, probably some different candies, which is generally the food that we get every year,” Mr. Ruch said. “And then water and juice boxes.”

Many students are curious about the policy that does not permit outside students at the Southern Lehigh Homecoming Dance. This rule has been in place for quite some time.

“For one, we’ve had issues in the past with students from other schools, which are challenging for us to deal with,” Mr. Ruch said. “It’s really a capacity thing, that’s the biggest problem. We’re at a point where we have to use the gym and the cafeteria because of capacity. We don’t want to prevent Southern Lehigh students from coming because we [were] over capacity when we allowed students from other schools.”

Many students had an incredible experience at this year’s homecoming dance.

“Homecoming was super fun,” sophomore Christy Nguyen said. “Especially screaming Taylor Swift [lyrics] with my favorite people.”