Prior to homecoming court voting, students can nominate who they want to be considered for voting. Bookidis and Migl ran together and were nominated together. 

“My friends were the ones who thought of me and my boyfriend when they were asked to nominate someone,” Bookidis said. 

Students being able to nominate who they want gives everyone an opportunity to run for homecoming court. Anyone can run to represent their class and students can nominate their peers that they think deserve to be homecoming royalty. 

“I think senior homecoming court gives students a chance to participate in a fun tradition and choose two of their classmates who represent the senior class,” Bookidis said. “However, it may not be so positive in some cases because the winners may get votes due to popularity versus character.”

Every homecoming court nominee gets to walk on the field and be applauded by the students and families and be escorted by their family and friends. Senior Caden Delk was a homecoming court nominee and ran alongside Layla Burns. 

“I think homecoming court is a fun thing to participate in but it could make students who aren’t as socially involved feel alienated or what not,” Delk said. “Overall though, I think it’s an important tradition to carry on in the future.”

Being chosen for homecoming court can bring a sense of leadership to the nominees because they were chosen by their classmates to represent the class.

“I’m proud to represent and be a part of our class and to celebrate our long yet quickly-diminishing youth,” Delk said. “I love all the people I’ve spent my entire life growing up with and wanted to be as involved with them as possible before I can’t anymore.”

Unlike other schools, Bowie hosts the homecoming dance two weeks after the homecoming football game. Many other schools host their homecoming dance the same weekend of the football game. 

“The dance being two weeks after the game doesn’t make any sense and I hate having to explain that our school doesn’t have homecoming at the same time as the game,” Delk said “I guess it’s good though because we usually lose our homecoming games, so it gives us time to forget about that before partying.” 

Students are not the only people who question the two week gap between the homecoming game and dance. Teacher and class of 2025 sponsor Kelly Langdon sees the confusion of why homecoming events are scheduled like this every year.

“I don’t know if it’s a Student Council decision or an administration decision,” Langdon said. “Maybe we should just have an earlier homecoming.”

Even without the dance, homecoming week was still full of activities for students and staff. Langdon and other 2025 class sponsor Shelby Pennington awarded the homecoming royalty winners with flowers and sashes.

“This year all we had to do was show up at the game,” Langdon said. “It was less this year, but we had more duties around all the voting and everything the previous years.”

With the help of class sponsors, parents, and bowie faculty, homecoming week and the senior homecoming court presentation went off without a hitch.

“I enjoyed the fun themes of homecoming week and the anticipation leading up to the game,” Bookidis said. “The days leading up to the announcement were full of excitement and I was looking forward to the event of getting to dress up and walk out on the field.”