Homecoming Marches On: Alumni Travel Miles to Celebrate The Honorable Tradition

If you were tailgating last Saturday, you know A-lot was a sea of blue and gold all morning and into early afternoon. Students, families and alumni ate burgers, played cornhole and got pumped with school spirit before walking over to Ram Stadium for the football game. “Tailgating is the greatest thing ever invented,” said Kevin Calloway. “Good food, great beer, hot ladies.” Calloway has been flying from California back to Shepherdstown for homecoming for the past three years.

Lambda Chi Alpha member Alex Eliopolo’s favorite part of tailgating is getting to spend time and catch up with the alumni. Although the dance, parties and tailgating is fun, homecoming is really all about the alumni. Walking down German Street at the parade Saturday morning, you saw countless alumni. Some traveled many miles, some walked from their house a couple blocks away, all of them came to show their support and pride in Shepherd University.

Jenny Jones-Nicewarner, a 2010 Shepherd graduate, came all the way from Orlando, Fla. to celebrate homecoming with her mother, a 1985 Shepherd graduate and her sister, a current Shepherd student. Her mother, Cindy, lives in Elkridge, Md. and still comes back for every home game. Despite the temperatures strangely sitting up in the 80s on an October day, the fans came out ready to sit through the heat and cheer on our Rams! After a 28-9 win at the homecoming game, it felt good to be a Ram.

Shepherd University fullback Jonathan Hammer felt great about the game: “I feel better about the second than first half because we didn’t really come out to play the first half, but we turned it around and did what we were supposed to do. That punt return really got us started. We were scoreless and they were ahead 3-0.” Hammer has high hopes for the rest of the season. “Knock on wood, we plan on going undefeated and make it to the playoffs.”

The football players weren’t the only stars of the game on Saturday. Ram Band rocked the halftime show with their “License to Thrill.” The announcer also publicized the spirit stick winners: Sigma Sigma Sigma took first place, Phi Kappa Tau took second and Delta Zeta came in third. They also recognized outstanding alumni and this year’s homecoming court.

There were a lot of changes to the homecoming court election process this year. First of all, voting was all done online. This change was made in attempt to make it more convenient for students to vote.

“No crowns this year; we don’t have a king or a queen. It was all non-gender, so it just ended up by luck of the draw that in the voting we had four men and four women who were elected, which we could not have predicted or planned. We didn’t know how that was going to work out,” said Director of Student Activities and Leadership, Rachael Mead.

Mead explains, “The reason we decided to do this is — we had a big conversation about how whenever we have homecoming voting there’s always a board where there’s just a picture of the person, but there was never any other information.” This usually led to people voting based on the looks of the people, regardless of who they were and what they did here at Shepherd. “We wanted to refocus it on Shepherd and Shepherd’s core values: What does it mean to be a Ram? What does it mean to represent the student body?” The Program Board decided to make the homecoming title more geared towards recognition of involvement on campus.

They also tried to tie it more to Shepherd’s core values. Nominees had to submit a short essay about why they are a good representation of Shepherd and our values. Those essays were put on the ballot so that students could vote based on that, not how a person looks in a picture. After a lot of debate, they also chose to not put categories of first, second, third and fourth-year students.

“We think it should be about what you contribute. If it’s all seniors, it’s all seniors. If there’s a first-year student who really embodies Shepherd, then that person should get it, too. It seems kind of artificial to put them in a box. So instead we decided to flatten it. There’s going to be no male or female, no class category — it’s just going to be ‘Are you a great representation of Shepherd’s core values?’” said Mead.

A lot of thought and discussion went into this change. It all seemed to have worked out with eight Shepherd students who have contributed enormous amounts of time and effort to our school taking the new and improved title. Congratulations Jeffrey Acosta, Kat Adams, Katy Coleman, Nicholas Etheridge, Ellie Johnson, Tom Jones, Michael Lesko and Rose Tribby! Thank you for all that you have done for our school.

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