For many students, homecoming week seems like a holiday. Shorter classes, different dress codes every day, the Taste of MC, all make this week different.  The icing on the cake is the weekend, which consists of the homecoming game and dance.

This year, homecoming week began with a mass celebrating the feast days of Carmelite Saints.  Fr. Leopold Glueckert, who returned to Mount Carmel’s faculty this year, was the celebrant.  Since it was a “Mass dress code” day, the homecoming dress code was limited to wearing wacky socks and ties.

Following Mass, students competed in an contest to see who could consume a lunch of a chicken sandwich, chicken tenders, two cookies, and fries the fastest. The contest featured six students for each of the three lunches, with Coach Rick Good making a surprise appearance in lunch 2.  Good devoured his opponents, and was the only one to even finish his lunch as his student competitiors only finished two of the four items placed before them.

Tuesday’ sspecial dress code theme was “Time Machine,” so students were invited to dress up in anything that related to the past.   Some students participated in groups, such as the varsity soccer team who wore greaser gear from the ’50s.

Alfonso Villanueva ’18 suggested the idea of a group outfit, then another teammate proposed coming as greasers. They all had white socks, brown khaki pants, a plain white shirt, and some even dared to wear a black jacket with sunglasses.

Students were encouraged to dress up as their dads for the “Taste of MC” event on Wednesday.  The “Taste of MC” is one of Mount Carmel’s biggest fundraisers, which includes nearly all extracurricular activities selling food or hosting special games, including sumo wrestling and chariot races.

Thursday featured MC’s annual pep rally.  The dress code was MC wear, which allowed students to wear anything they wanted as long as had a Mount Carmel name or logo on it. The rally included of the singing of the fight song, varsity captains for soccer, cross-country, golf, and football giving short speeches, Mr. Mark Antonietti’s traditional “Yeah, Man” chant (where inspires students to be proud to be a man of Carmel), and pumpkin smashing.

Some students felt homecoming didn’t live up to previous years, Sophomore Owen Madrigal noted that  “Homecoming last year was better since we had a lot more activities to get excited about.” On the other side, Junior Juan De La Torre didn’t notice much difference, “Homecoming felt the same as it did for the past two years.”

To cap off the week, Friday’s dress-down theme was “American Flag Day,” which gave students the opportunity to wear red, white, and blue.  Senior Jack Spellman embodied the dress code, coming to school in his star spangled banner suit which impressed both students and teachers.  After school, there was a barbecue for students and alumni before the homecoming game, in which MC triumphed over De La Salle by a score of 56-6.