The Sanford Spartans football team bursts through the crash-through ahead of Friday’s Homecoming game. Photo by Tiffani Bourque
By Tiffani Bourque
The screaming student sections. The floats. The red and white. The pep rally. The competition between classes. The friends in the stands and the football players under the lights: For generations of Sanford High School students, those moments have become part of a tradition that stretches far beyond a single football game.
Welcome to Homecoming. For one week each fall, Homecoming reminds generations of Spartans of what it means to belong to Sanford.
Some, like freshman Christopher Currier, are experiencing it for the first time.
Currier, who plays center back for Sanford’s JV soccer team, didn’t know what to expect for his first SHS Homecoming Week. He quickly learned that spirit week meant more than doing fun things with his classmates. Between the games, pep rally, dance and other activities, Currier said Homecoming made him feel like he was “not only part of a town, but part of a fun and caring community.”
Friday’s pep rally particularly stood out to Currier. Students gathered with their respective grades, competing for the coveted spirit stick while cheering alongside classmates they might not otherwise spend time with.
“It’s just so much fun, making friends and spending time with people you normally wouldn’t in your classes,” Currier said.
Senior Max Cote leads the student section in cheers during Friday night’s Homecoming football game. Photo by Tiffani Bourque
For Currier, there are three more Homecomings ahead, but for senior Max Cote, this is it. Cote, a forward on Sanford’s basketball team and a pitcher for the baseball team, said that reality made this year’s celebration noticeably different.
“This year is so special,” he said. “I’m so glad I get to be here with my friends who are on and off the field.”
Cote admits his freshman-year self was a little different. Back then, he had what he called a “too cool to cheer” mentality. Three years later, he finds himself at the front of the student section, helping lead the cheers and supporting Sanford teams whether they win or lose.
Watching younger students now begin the same four-year journey is bittersweet. Cote hopes they embrace it.
“I think it is cool to know how much fun they are going to have over the next four years,” he said. “I’d hope they enjoy Homecoming to the fullest.”
While Cote has watched the tradition through four years as a student, Martin McKeon has watched Sanford Homecoming evolve over more than five decades. As a former Sanford High School teacher and alumnus, he has had considerably more time to understand it.
Students cheer from the stands during Sanford High School’s 1993 Homecoming game. Photo by Amy Sevigny
McKeon graduated from SHS in 1975 and returned as a social studies and English teacher in 1984, remaining until his retirement in 2018. Over those years, he served as a class adviser, student council adviser and pep club adviser, helping shape many of the traditions that generations of Sanford students now associate with Homecoming.
McKeon remembers when Homecoming was much smaller and largely centered around football throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. Over time, more sports and activities became involved, class competitions grew and added traditions one by one.
Some of McKeon’s own contributions from his time as pep club and student council adviser remain familiar today, including a point system for the spirit stick, the human tunnel that students form before the football team takes the field and adding a grand marshal to the parade.
But perhaps the biggest change McKeon said he witnessed is that Homecoming no longer depends upon what happens on the scoreboard. “It is bigger than a game,” he said.
For McKeon, its staying power has much to do with Sanford itself.
“Sanford needs as many opportunities for community pride as possible,” he said. “Sanford is a very proud community. We have had so many challenges over the years, but this is one thing that people really look forward to and show up in big numbers. It’s on everyone’s calendar. This is what we do.”
Brett Williams understands that connection from both sides as well. An SHS alumnus who is now a faculty member and class adviser, Williams remembers Homecoming being fun as a teenager– but says he understands its purpose differently as an adult.
“As a kid, you don’t understand the why,” he said.
Now, he watches students build, cheer, compete and work together toward common goals. What may look like a week of chaos to some, he says, is actually creating something much more lasting.
“Those moments form core memories,” Williams said. “As an adult, you look back on it and say, ‘Oh wow, that worked. It made me love my community.’”
This year’s freshmen will become seniors. This year’s seniors will become alumni. Some may one day stand along the parade route with children of their own. Others may find themselves, like Williams and McKeon, back inside the school that helped shape them.
As an adviser, Williams hopes his students eventually feel that same pull toward Sanford.
“I want our kids to love Sanford and to come back and feel a part of the community,” he said. The floats will change. New traditions will inevitably join old ones. Another football team will run onto the field, another freshman class will discover the student section, and another group of seniors will realize that somehow four Homecomings have already
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