Homecoming floats: an endangered species

A Fallbrook High school homecoming tradition of 30 years is in jeopardy, says Josh Way the school’s ASB director. It’s a bittersweet dilemma. Although the Warriors football team now plays on brand new artificial turf, when the adjacent synthetic track is

added after October 5, it may signal the end of the colorful floats that are part of the high school’s history. “No other school makes floats like we do,” says Josh. It’s not that other schools with synthetic tracks don’t have floats, they do–just not the size and award-winning design and fabrication of Fallbrook’s.

Last year the Senior class float won first place in a nationwide competition, the Junior class float took second place, and the Freshman class won best float overall in the school’s own contest. After this year’s homecoming, the sturdy wooden frames lowered onto small trucks like a Toyota pickup, will be gone, unless the school, its parent supporters and interested community engineers can devise a way to continue the tradition.

Though it might seem weight presents the problem, it’s not; it’s the oil and chemicals in the trucks dripping onto the track’s surface. Josh Way has considered a barrier, like the tarps thrown on a baseball field prior to a rainstorm, but tarps present

their own problems: cleaning, maintenance, storage are three. The floats could be smaller to make them movable using “manpower” instead of an engine. Rancho Buena Vista high school took this step to adapt to their synthetic track. Instead of vehicles propelling the floats, this school built smaller and lighter weight floats with caster and wheelbarrow wheels, so they could be pushed by students.

These concessions aren’t good enough for Josh. He wants a solution that doesn’t compromise the floats they have now, because even the rudiments of the float structures are part of the tradition. The wooden frame, stored from year to year, is passed from the senior class upon graduation to the incoming freshman class. There’s more to the rich tradition that needs preserving, too. Although float building falls under the responsibility of the elected class representatives, each team must include at lease one student from each of the auto mechanics, metals, and woodworking classes thereby extending participation.

Although the Senior class floats are built by Seniors; Junior class floats by Juniors, and so forth, representatives from the Industrial Technology classes can work on any of the floats as needed. Even students from Agriculture Mechanics get involved. “This is an amazing group of students and teachers, we’re lucky to have them,” Josh says,

referring to these specialized areas. It takes four to five weeks to design and construct a float, with students averaging three hours a day. Their parents get involved, too. Some come back a second year to help, even when their children have graduated. The top 25 students who put in the most hours go to the field before homecoming to put on the finishing touches. That’s an honor in itself, Josh says.

Josh Way is nostalgic about the floats and the possibility of their demise. He lived across the street from Fallbrook High School as a kid, attended the school and built floats himself. A large part of why he wants to keep the tradition alive is personal, he admits. “I still have the friends who worked with me on the floats during high school.” But it’s more than that, for Josh Way and the students who have participated in the homecoming float tradition for 30 years. He says it simply: “It’s great for a school to be the best in the nation at something.”

Josh and the students responsible for homecoming floats in 2008 need help with a solution to motorizing their floats on the synthetic track and would like assistance from Fallbrook and Bonsall community engineers.

To volunteer ideas, call Josh Way at 723-6300, extension 3501, or get in touch by e-mail: [email protected].