GRAND HAVEN, MI — Grand Haven is preparing for one of the high school’s most important annual traditions this weekend, as hundreds of students attend a football game Friday before spending Saturday getting dressed up to stand in small circles and look at their phones.
Homecoming festivities begin Friday night with football, school spirit and the annual appearance of alumni who haven’t attended another Grand Haven sporting event since approximately three weeks after their own graduation.
Students are expected to arrive wearing school colors, cheer enthusiastically and spend significant portions of the game determining where everyone else is sitting.
By Saturday afternoon, activity will shift to area homes, parks and waterfront locations as parents begin the annual process of photographing teenagers who have repeatedly asked them to stop.
Local families are advised to allow additional travel time between 4 and 6 p.m., when virtually every scenic location in Grand Haven will be occupied by groups of teenagers arranged in increasingly complicated formations.
“We’ve got the traditional lineup, the couples picture, the girls picture, the guys picture, the girls pretending to laugh picture and the one where everybody walks toward the camera for some reason,” explained one parent, who estimated she had taken 317 photographs before anyone had actually left for dinner.
Officials expect the photography portion of Homecoming to last significantly longer than the dance itself.
Preparations have been underway for weeks, involving dresses, shirts, ties, flowers, dinner reservations, hair appointments and a series of Venmo transactions no parent fully understands.
Teenage boys throughout the district are also expected to learn Saturday afternoon that a boutonniere cannot simply be placed somewhere on the front of a shirt.
Mothers have been placed on standby with pins.
Once inside the dance, students will participate in a social structure that has remained remarkably consistent across generations.
Approximately 12 percent will dance. Another 23 percent will stand nearby discussing whether they should dance. The remaining 65 percent will periodically disappear in groups to take additional photographs documenting the evening they are currently missing.
School officials have reportedly spent considerable time assembling a playlist capable of satisfying hundreds of teenagers while containing none of the lyrics actually found in the songs.
“It’s challenging,” said one administrator. “Last year we censored so much of one song that the DJ essentially played bass for 46 seconds.”
The evening is expected to conclude with another cherished Homecoming tradition: students who spent four hours getting ready leaving the dance approximately 47 minutes after arriving.
Parents have been instructed not to ask what happens afterward.
They have already been assured that everyone is “just going to someone’s house.”
No additional information is expected to become available.
