The Homecoming game is a football game that takes place every year at Mansion Park when students running for Homecoming royalty will hear who won the crown. The game was played on Sept. 30 at 7 p.m., the night after the Homecoming dance.

The cheerleaders, Lioneers, silks, band, majorettes and Homecoming candidates came in through the front gates around 6:40 p.m. 

“The goal is to be the most crowd-engaging as you can be. Prior to kickoff the cheerleaders, silks, majorettes, band and Lioneers all get to march into the stadium to put on a show to captivate the crowd and build their excitement. On behalf of the cheerleaders, we add more to the excitement with our facials and different cheers to give the fans something to watch before kickoff,” cheer captain Kylie Fotch said. 

The game this year was played against Harrisburg. 

“Personally I feel that this game was no different than any other game,” head coach Vincent Nedimyer said. 

Kick off for the game happened at 7 p.m. By the end of the first quarter, Harrisburg was up with a score of 12-0.

“The first quarter and after half time I thought we would at least get into a little bit of a rhythm, but it turned out the complete opposite. It was kind of a repeat of the first half. I was confident after the first half, but after things started not going our way and all the starters got taken out. That is when I realized we were going to lose,” football player Alexander Yost said. 

The final score of the game was 48-0 with Harrisburg taking the victory. 

“It didn’t feel too good, especially when you get blown out, it’s never a good feeling. We really struggled against a really good Midpen team, so we were thinking we would match up well with them but the complete opposite happened. Especially in front of all of those people there, a bunch of fans and Homecoming, it didn’t feel too good to lose in front of them,” Yost said.

During home football games, some students will take part in each week’s theme. The student section was filled with people participating in the theme of the white out. 

“My favorite theme was the super hero theme because I like to dress up like that; it’s fun,“ senior Neveah Vasquez said. 

With this loss the team plans to use it as motivation for upcoming games. 

“We plan to use this as motivation by working harder, and all pitch in more effort than we probably would or have been giving the past couple weeks. We are going to go harder at practice, and push one another to be better. We are going to always think of the Homecoming score and the state college score. It’s definitely not a good feeling, so when we think of those scores we will push each other and not let it happen again,” Yost said.