Wilton High School students spent their homecoming week burning calories and making life-long memories. A big, vibrant burst of color filled the sky on Thursday, Oct. 3 at the high school as students celebrated homecoming week with the first ever color run.
Each year, the Wilton High School Student Leadership members come together to brainstorm a unique theme for that year’s homecoming. This year, “Jurassic Park” was chosen. As part of homecoming, each grade level makes a class shirt to wear during the homecoming activities. But this year, the shirts looked a little different.
The 39 Student Leadership team designed the front of the homecoming shirt, and each individual grade level designed the back of the shirts. This year, because of the color run, the group decided to leave the shirts white — later to be decorated with different colored designs during the run.
Incorporating the color run was Wilton senior Emily Fausel’s idea. Fausel wanted homecoming week to incorporate a new activity this year. After discussing it with high school media center adviser Lisa Taylor-Furne, Fausel pitched her color run idea to homecoming adviser Erik Grunder and the Student Leadership group – and it was a go.
First step in pulling off a school-wide color run was to purchase supplies, and find a team to help organize and execute a successful run. The team was already in place, the Student Leadership group, which planned, organized and tossed color during the run.
The supplies were purchased through Amazon. The school bought the colored powder (cornstarch and food coloring) bottles to spray the students as they ran by and individual packets of color to throw in the air as a celebration after the event.
“To be honest, I had no idea how it was going to work. I was worried students would not participate, wouldn’t like it and my biggest concern was that there wasn’t going to be much of the powder to go around. I was 100 percent wrong. Some of the students were absolutely coated, and it went great,” said Grunder.
The run was to take place at the football practice field. Students were dismissed from the high school gym by grade level, wearing their white class shirts. The color run started at the fence by the high school track and went toward the football practice field – then stopped. Student Leadership members came out to the practice field before the students were dismissed to set up along the run, and they each had a spray bottle full of colored powder to toss at the students as they ran by.
Around 80 percent or more of the student body participated in the color run.
The Student Leadership group joined together to help make the run go off without a hitch. Some of them were at the stations tossing color; others were handing out packets of colored powder to students after they finished the race.
After the color run, students gathered in the middle of the practice field, held onto the packet of colored powder they were given, and waited for the count down to celebrate homecoming week with a big burst of color thrown in the air. Different colors flew as high school students threw up their packets, poured the colored powder on their friends and celebrated a successful color run event.
The next day during an assembly, students were asked if they wanted to make the color run an annual tradition. “Students were excited about it. Everyone yelled ‘yeah’ during the assembly. The whole time everyone was having fun and said they were glad they did it,” said Fausel.
After the color run, the students finished off the week with a variety of other homecoming traditions — tug of war between grade levels, a rock paper scissors tournament, and a pep rally.
“I think that is our plan,” Grunder responded after being asked if the color run was going to happen again next year. “We had a great response from the student body, but I am always looking for something new or fun — or just ways to improve the color run itself.”