Homecoming is often considered one of the most important times every year in high school, especially at Lambert. I’m in Student Council, and I know the importance of homecoming – we spend countless hours decorating hallways, planning, and creating hype. Homecoming is supposed to be one of your fondest memories – wearing a pretty dress or a nice tie, and dancing the night away with your friends or your date. But I don’t have any memories of homecoming. I’ve never been. And it’s not because I don’t want to – I spend a lot of time every fall working to make homecoming as amazing as possible with my fellow Student Council members. I wish I could see what I’ve worked so hard to accomplish. But every year, on the night of the homecoming dance, I’ve been elsewhere. I’ve been competing with the marching band, and yes, the band is my family. All my closest friends are in marching band with me, working tirelessly to achieve some of the amazing things we’ve done. And don’t get me wrong – every year we’ve had our own little version of homecoming that we call “bandcoming”, and it’s great, but it’s just not the same. This year, the band was told that things would be different. We were all excited to finally go to homecoming for the first time. Yet it was always in the back of our minds that perhaps we would have yet another “conflict”, and it would be another year of working hard at the big homecoming game, but not being able to enjoy the dance. Our fears were confirmed the first week of school, when it was announced that we had a competition on the day of the dance. I understand the reasoning behind it, for sure. This competition will challenge the band to do better and will give us a great idea of how we’re performing so that we can improve before Southern States Championships. And we are a very close-knit group – we spend more time with each other than with our families, practically. We put each other first and love each other no matter what and we’ve been known to call ourselves “the biggest clique at Lambert”. I have nothing against the band because I am part of the band. I’m an officer, and I dedicate more time to band than anything else. Honestly, the people I would spend my time with at homecoming are the same people I’m spending my time with that night at the competition, or at bandcoming. But I would bet that you can’t find a single person in the marching band who says that they’re perfectly fine with not going to homecoming, especially my fellow seniors. I understand that we have a conflict. One year, one time, sure thing. But now that I’ve missed every single year? It’s too much. Both the competition schedule and the homecoming date are determined months and months in advance. Would it be so much trouble if, after years and years of this, someone decided to make an accommodation so that the almost 200 people involved in band could attend homecoming? I don’t think so. This isn’t an insolvable problem, and it certainly doesn’t need to become a permanent tradition. Maybe next year, this will be resolved.