It is probably true that Plymouth, Canton and Salem Homecomings are equally as fun as an Ohio Homecoming, but what are the differences between the two? Students at the Park and Wapakoneta High School, in Wapakoneta Ohio, both have similar and very different traditions when it comes to their homecoming dances. Wapakoneta, home of the Redskins, is a small town of little over ten thousand people and is two and a half hours away from Canton. Their dances have many different qualities, including only having one dance, all grades have a king and queen,  they dress very over the top and it runs from eight to eleven verses seven to ten like P-CEP’s.

Unlike Wapakoneta traditions, such as having a homecoming king and queen for each grade and a king’s and queen’s first dance, the Park homecomings have traditions of their own. For the Park, they announce the king and queen at the homecoming football game of that school. The Parks’ dances go from seven to ten at night, while Wapakoneta goes from eight to 11 at night. At the three high schools they have three dances and anyone from any of the three schools can go to them, the only problem is they can’t bring other people from different schools.

Leslie Zazula, Salem Senior Homecoming Queen said, “Our homecoming’s are different in the sense that only P-CEP students are allowed to attend, but it makes it fun since you know that these are the people you go to school with every day. For me, senior year homecoming was my favorite. I definitely saved the best for last!”

Brianna Waggoner, Salem Senior, said “The park homecoming is a lot different from other homecomings, because we don’t have a bunch of random people there. Everyone goes to the Park, nobody can bring in dates from other schools.”

Mikey Schwartz, Salem senior, added on, “I don’t have experience with other homecomings, but I would say our homecomings are a little less formal as we don’t have too many people who go with dates like other schools, and also the fact that the tickets for ours are in higher demand due to the amount of kids at our school.”

Unlike at the Park, Wapakoneta students stick their traditional roots of girls wearing poofy, baby doll dresses with heels and guys wearing a tie with a dark-colored vest to match their dates’ dress.  Most of the students at the dance show up with dates and barely anyone goes with friends.

Austin Kirkendall, Wapakoneta senior says, “Honestly, I think our dance this year was pretty boring. The music always stops and turns down and no one is dancing.” Kirkendall used to attend Plymouth High School during his freshman year. He adds that our school dances are way better and more entertaining. “When I went to Salem’s homecoming it was so much fun and the after party was awesome!”

Another common thing after a Wapakoneta dance is to bring the fun back to the gazebo, where they have no adults and get to play any music they want. Harley Mckinney, Wapakoneta senior says, “Since the music at the dance mostly sucks, me and my friends go to the gazebo and get hype.” Mckinney adds that normally the police show up just to check up on them time to time, but overall they just jam out to their own playlist.

Even though Wapakoneta has very different traditions than P-CEPs, their rules for the dance are very strict. “There is no use of ‘dirty dancing’ at all for the dance,” says Cameron Gibson, Wapakoneta senior. Gibson adds that limiting the dances they can do loses the fun of the whole dance. Gibson and others were very upset with this rule and left the dance early to go to the gazebo.

Wapakoneta students are very unique with their spirit for their school. Both P-CEP and Wapakoneta schools want their students to have fun, but not go overboard. The homecomings for both schools are pulled together to let students have a great time with one another and enjoy their school dance.