Homecoming Week is coming. Once again, Benicia High School will maximize its spirit levels next week and welcome back former students with its annual rally, dance and football game.

One Homecoming tradition will not be present this year, and that is the float parade. However, school officials have replaced it with something just as appealing: a carnival.

Mary Wheat, Benicia High’s activities director, said a lot of factors inspired the decision to end the floats. One was the breezy length of the parades. The parades typically consisted of four floats designed by members of each of the classes.

“The parade was always a fun activity, but it was always very short,” she said. “It ran approximately 15 minutes from beginning to end.”

Benicia High last held a float parade in 2015. Wheat said the school offered to do a parade last year without floats, but students did not think it would be worth it.

Additionally, when the school could not find a warehouse to store the floats, students had to build them in the Multi-Purpose Room, which Wheat said was taking up space utilized by physical education classes and the school’s wrestling team.

“People loved the floats, but not everyone realized the money and time that went into building them,” she said. “Although it was a tough decision, we felt it was best to end the tradition of building floats.”

Wheat said Benicia High was one of the few schools in the area still using floats for its Homecoming events anyway. However, with the end of one tradition came the genesis of a potential new tradition the school had been talking about for a while: a Homecoming carnival.

On Thursday, the lower baseball fields will be transformed into the grounds of a carnival featuring bounce houses, food booths, games and craft booths.

“We even have a dunk tank that I believe some of our teachers and administrators will be opening themselves up to be victims,” Wheat said.

Much of the fundraising will come through the student clubs, sports teams and classes at booths of their choosing.

“We put out a contract/registration form and we currently have approximately 27 booths,” Wheat said.

Apart from the carnival, much of Homecoming Week will be the same. All next week is Spirit Week, where students are encouraged to dress up under a different theme each day. The week will be all Disney-themed, so students and faculty can dress as Disneyland or Disney World tourists for Monday’s “A Day in the Park” theme or their respective class colors for Friday’s “Colors of the Wind” theme. There will also be a rally on Friday followed by the varsity and junior varsity football games against Vallejo High School at George Drolette Stadium, where the Homecoming King and Queen will be crowned during halftime and the rest of the court will be crowned before the varsity game. It will all culminate with the Homecoming Dance in the BHS gym on Saturday.

The carnival will be held from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12 in the lower baseball fields of Benicia High, located at 1101 Military West. The event is open to the community and is free, although additional tickets for food and games can be purchased for 50 cents each. The number of tickets for each booth will vary. For more information, contact Wheat at mwheat@beniciaunified.org.

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