On Saturday, September 25th, 2021, Jesuit High School Sacramento’s annual Homecoming Dance took place at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex. With last year’s homecoming being canceled due to COVID-19 related reasons, this homecoming was more important than usual. 

Lots of change had to occur in order to allow Jesuit’s Homecoming Dance to take place. One of the largest changes was the change in venue for the dance. 

Due to the extenuating circumstances with regards to COVID-19, going off-campus seemed like it was the easiest way to host a Jesuit homecoming. Jesuit Activities Director Mr. Peter Ferrari notes the success of the change in venue but still hopes to return to Jesuit’s gym for future years. 

“We went off campus because we were able to do it in a safe environment at Haggin Oaks given COVID protocols right now,” Mr. Ferrari said. “Given the COVID situation right now, doing it off campus made it a lot easier to host the event. So hopefully, in a world where COVID is a little bit more behind us, we’ll be able to come back on campus in the gym like we normally do.”

Needing to move homecoming off campus made planning and execution more challenging. Senior class Vice President Christian Covert ’22 notes the venue change and its effects.

“I think that the dance was slightly harder to facilitate due to the venue change,” Christian said. “The venue was more expensive and also more time was needed to be put into going to Haggin Oaks rather than staying on campus. I do think it was harder to facilitate but not by a large margin.”

One of the other challenges faced was the increased demand for tickets. Changing the venue to accommodate COVID limited the number of attendees that were allowed to attend the Dance. 

“It was hard trying to give more tickets to attendees while trying to stay within the capacity of the venue,” Christian said. “It did create some inconveniences due to the demand for the tickets which in turn caused a shortage for tickets.”

The ticketing process proved difficult for students because changing the venue restricted the number of tickets that could be offered. 

“The ticketing process was less than ideal,” said Blake Greene ‘22. “I feel like they didn’t give us nearly enough time to buy tickets and did not warn us that there were limited tickets.”

Despite the unfortunate ticketing process, homecoming allowed classmates to reunite with others that they haven’t seen in a while.

“This Homecoming Dance was better than previous years,” said Blake. “It was the first time we have all come together in quite a while.”

Being able to work around the COVID-19 regulations is no small achievement, and Homecoming only happened thanks to the efforts of Jesuit’s student government