Kamran Padilla

In future issues, members of the Allatoona High School newspaper staff will be contributing articles to Around Acworth, keeping you up to date on news, students and teachers at their school. This month, staff reporter Kamran Padilla kicks off things with a look at the school’s homecoming traditions.

Homecoming Traditions

Celebrating the Golden Game

BY KAMRAN PADILLA

In fall 2008, Allatoona High School opened its doors for the first time to welcome the Class of 2010. The reason it was not for the Class of 2009 is because Allatoona had no seniors the first year. It has been about a decade and a half since the school opened, and homecoming, the biggest game of the season, celebrates former Allatoona Buccaneers who come back each year. The first princess of homecoming was freshman Natalie Buckshaw, and the homecoming queen was Ashley Noble. Homecoming originally was for the girls, and that is why there was not a single boy on the homecoming court that year. The boys still had something — it was known as Hoopcoming. We soon adopted the tradition of having a king and queen for homecoming.

Then came the homecoming game. The Bucs were not doing so great, losing the game right before homecoming, so when the homecoming game came around, they were ready to defend Buc Stadium. A tough game against the North Paulding Wolfpack was played that night. The Wolfpack pushed through our lines, winning, but we did not let that game go. We played North Paulding again on their field the next time, and we were furious. We fought with all our might to win that night to show them our Buc pride.

Allatoona High carried out an annual tradition by crowning the 2022 homecoming king and queen, seniors Cayden Phillips and Valeria Lopez, last month.

One of the biggest traditions at Allatoona is the homecoming dance being held in the cafeteria. The decorations have never been bought or set up by an outside organization. The Bucs take great pride in doing events on our own, so the art club took control of decorating the school. This is where our biggest club, Helm, was born. Helm has helped every year to set up decorations, saving the school so much money. This also led to The Playlist, a tradition where students would pick songs and make a huge playlist for games and the dance. We even had our own deejay to play them, our old administrator, Mr. S. High schoolers being high schoolers, they played songs when they were not supposed to, so they did lose their music privileges, but they got them back later. They did learn their lesson, hopefully.

The school was crazy the first few years. Allatoona had a car that had the opponent’s name written on it, and the students demolished it. Following safety procedures like wearing gloves and eye protection, they went to town on that car. They also had a huge bonfire one day, where the flames reached more than 20 feet tall. The teachers also had their part in the craziness. They went all out dressing up for Spirit Week. They even painted students’ hair to try to win the Spirit Week competition. The dance-offs during the dance were crazy, and teachers still talk about them to this day. Teachers had to teach the students to be spirited.

Every year, the Allatoona Bucs get ready for homecoming through Spirit Week. Bucs will go all out each day dressing up, bringing crazy backpacks and showing off their class colors. The Bucs’ Bleachers were shining bright during homecoming last month, for it was a Gold Out for the Buccaneers. After a long week of spirit and football, then comes Saturday and our tradition in the cafeteria to boogie all the rest of our energy away. This week is for all Toona kids and previous Toona kids to enjoy every year!

Kamran Padilla is a senior at Allatoona High School. He is a member of the newspaper staff and a cadet chief petty officer in the Navy JROTC.