Written By: Isaac Julian, Staff Writer
DEDICATION: With their hard work, Poly’s Junior class earns the victory in float building.
It’s homecoming season here at Poly, which brings an exciting week full of events! With a football game, dance, parade, and even dress-up themes, there is plenty for students to get excited about. But the clear highlight of the whole event has to be the floats put on display at the parade. Over the course of the week, students of each class come together after school to create these amazing floats, one paper flower at a time. It doesn’t come easy, and each of the four grades is competing for the winning spot decided by a panel of judges made up of the Poly staff. Float building never fails to fill this school with spirit, and this time is no exception.
Juniors working hard on their float
The theme for all the 2023 floats is “Bears on Film,” as chosen by ASB. The Junior class was tasked with incorporating romance into their design. The members of ASB wasted no time in planning out the ideas that would shape their float. “We all had a meeting and we talked about possible ideas, then we voted on it,” explained Gunnar Gifford (11), a member of ASB. Jonathan Viene (11), another ASB member, affirmed this by describing how “[they] made a bunch of edits and eventually got to what [they’re] building now.” So what made this float such a challenge? The Juniors sought out to build four individual bears for their float, all based on characters from romance films. In just one week. They had their work cut out for them, so they started swiftly.
From Monday to Friday, students gathered from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. each day to put in effort towards this project. For most students, their task was to mass-produce flowers made of tissue paper and twist ties. With a regiment like that, people are bound to bond with one another and create friendships. Jackson Penunuri (11), among many others, explained that the motive for building the float was to “spend even more time with friends”. Others, like Jonathan (11), admitted that their favorite part was “definitely the food.” On the other end of production, most of the ASB members worked on constructing the float itself. Working with wood and wire proved challenging. Making each bear out of wire was even painful at times, and “caused [them] to bleed many times” according to Delaney Adcock (11). As the week progressed, classrooms would fill with people with flowers in hand trying to stay on track to complete their float. Finally, as they reached the end of the extremely late Friday night, it was complete.
Juniors making tissue paper flowers
The very next day, everyone eagerly waited to unveil their work at the parade. Juniors represented romance films, the Freshmen chose alien films, the Sophomores chose horror films, and the Seniors picked action films. Everyone was on edge to hear the results of the winner, especially the Juniors, who had one of the best among the four. But the Seniors, who had a history of winning the competition, were neck and neck with them. The announcement of the Juniors’ victory sparked excitement on the faces of everyone in the grade. Despite the friendly competition, each grade did a great job on their floats and should be commended. Hopefully, next year’s float-building competition will be just as close as this one!