Sweet, delicious and mouthwatering pieces of chocolatety goodness hang from the ceiling tiles, while playful and colorful pieces of candy line the exterior walls of the gym.  The sugary smell of fresh cotton-candy fills the air and exciting music plays in the background.  Your wildest dreams will come true as you step into the all too familiar game of Candy Land at the homecoming dance on Saturday, Sept. 28.  Everything that you will see at the dance has taken an immense amount of time and dedication from many different individuals.  Three in particular  were given the task of chairing the dance this year in its entirety.

Seniors Katie Zetzman, Dilnoza Inoyatova and Emily Glazer were chosen by both dance team and cheer squad members. Together, they are the students behind all of the work that has gone into the Homecoming dance thus far, and the work that will continue until the dance. The girls have their own responsibilities, but also delegated jobs among the other organizations that are involved in the action going on behind the scenes of the dance.

“We help lead the work-nights along with a member of the dance team and the cheer squad,” Zetzman said. “We also came up with the theme and the different decorations. We’ve pretty much divided up all of the responsibilities and starting the first week, everyone got their own individual jobs.”

The different tasks that each group of cheer and dance team members were assigned to consisted of things such as cleaning paint brushes, making candy out of hoola-hoops and painting the characters found in the board game on cardboard.  Each week since the beginning of September, the three chairs have been continually working with the groups to make sure things get done before the dance comes.

While the theme, Candy Land, has been done in the past, having chairs for the homecoming dance is a new addition. Although it may seem the chairs are only overseers, the time they have put in to make sure all goes as planned has benefited the teachers in charge of Homecoming, English instructors Molly Spisak and Chanel Colt, and the dancers and cheerleaders.

“There are sometimes conflicting ideas with cheer and dance and it’s nice to have chairs to not make final decisions, but kind of negotiate between the two,” Zetzman said.

Although the change may not be all that noticeable, the senior chairs have been very influential with everything that has been done with the Homecoming dance this year.  Glazer knows from her experience helping prepare for Homecoming in earlier years that by having chairs for the dance, not much has changed, but that it is a much needed and valued position to have.

“By being a cheerleader in previous years, I feel like as chairs, we are definitely respected, but it’s no different from previous years when they did not have chairs,” Glazer said. “The same amount of work gets done, and bascially the dance team assigns their girls what they have to do and the cheer girls assign their squads.”