Photo by Kiera Fitzgerald
By Elizabeth Druist, Keira Fitzgerald, Nadia Flores
With the start of the new school year comes the annual homecoming parade. The homecoming parade hasn’t always been a tradition at BK. Mrs. Shanahan, an advisor of the Pep Club explains that in the fall of 2021, “with Covid still floating around, having an assembly was not happening…and so the former principal Mr. Caldwell had suggested it to me…” She details that the parade was a great alternative to the traditional homecoming assembly because “it was something different, [and] it got more people involved in the activity.”
Many clubs and sports teams participated in the parade. Some highlights of the event this year include the Rodeo Club riding their horses and the Worldwide Club’s alpacas. Natasha D’Souza, a member of Worldwide Club, stated that “ From my understanding, we brought them just for fun.” A club member owns the alpacas and “brought them to the parade just as something fun and different. I think a lot of people enjoyed seeing them and getting to interact with them.”
Another club who walked the parade is the Rodeo Club. After an interview with Miss Frederick, the Rodeo Club’s leader, it’s learned that the rodeo season is usually late spring through fall. The girls compete in whatever rodeos they sign up for. Some girls have competed at the Junior Nationals Rodeo in Las Vegas. It is a national organization, so the people who compete there are the best of the best.
The girls work with their horses pretty much everyday, they have to be athletically fit as well as their animals because they compete together. There is a lot of exposure and repetition and training the horse to do what is needed. Some girls have their horses barrel race, some compete in break-away (when there is a calf and they have to rope a calf as quickly as possible). They meet once a month and go over what rodeos they might have coming up. They will take friends and go to an arena and train. They had their parents trailer their horses in for the parade.
Overall, there were over 25 clubs who participated in this year’s homecoming parade. With clubs parading in cars or horseback, with alpacas and robots (like Clampy from BK’s Bullbots) following the beat of our BK band, the homecoming parade is a great way to celebrate the start of a new school year. As the school grows, hopefully there will be more participating clubs marching with joy.
The Bishop Kelly Newspaper 