ROCKINGHAM — Homecoming week at Richmond Senior High School is coming to a close, and even though teachers and students aren’t in the building, an effort is being made to see the festivities continue.
Richmond’s senior senate will hold a special “Friday Night Lights” event in the school’s parking lot Friday near Raider Stadium. The socially-distanced homecoming event will feature music and be dedicated to the late Rev. Ricky Jacobs.
During homecoming week at Richmond during non-coronavirus years, students and faculty participate in several spirit week days. On Friday mornings, the homecoming court, which is made up of all the seniors on the football team and their dates, is recognized in front of the school during a pep rally.
The annual homecoming parade in downtown Rockingham was canceled this year, and the pinnacle of the week, the Raider football homecoming game, will also not happen. The Raiders were slated to play Hoke County High School, but instead won’t play the Bucks until March 19.
To make up for the week of lost activities, senate advisor Arthur Gilliam and the senior senate hosted “kindness week” the last five school days. The message was to “spread kindness, not COVID-19.”
“The entire theme for senate this year has been to ‘pivot’,” Gilliam explained. “In other words, how can we make lemonade out of lemons? So (senate) decided to go with Friday Night Lights, which was started by last year’s senate.
“It’s a way for them to get together and social distance, but be together and do something for what would have been their homecoming.”
Last spring, members of the senior senate in the class of 2020 held regular Friday Night Light events at Raider Stadium shortly after the pandemic started and stopped academic and athletic functions.
Friday’s socially-distanced homecoming tribute event for “The Rev” will begin at 8 p.m. The Richmond Observer will have more on this story in an upcoming edition.
