There’s No Place Like Florida Tech’s Homecoming

Let’s take a walk down the yellow-brick road and understand why this was the best Florida Tech Homecoming I have ever been a part of.

Opening Ceremony

Greek life at Florida Tech is like no other in the world. We are all involved in everything and homecoming is no exception. The opening ceremony started off Tuesday night with a bunch of my fraternity brothers and I serenading one of the new potentials for ΓΦΒ sorority. It was big/little week for the sorority and this was her next clue to finding out who her big sister was. We all sang her a song titled “Little Full of Sunshine” (not to be confused with the Natasha Bedingfield tune). This is just one small example of how our Greek community works. Following our song, the ceremony included an introduction of each organization’s king and queen, and fun and games for everyone!

Lip-Sync/Talent Show

The next night was the Florida Tech Lip-Sync and Talent Show. Here, organizations vying in the homecoming competition create a lip-sync performance related to the theme of homecoming. This year, my fraternity (TKE) partnered with the Alpha Phi (ΑΦ) sorority. Our lip-sync performance included five members from each chapter and we ended up taking first place! Our costumes, the music and dancing were loved by the students in attendance.

Baseball Game

During homecoming, the Florida Tech Club Baseball Team played the University of Central Florida Baseball Team. In this event, you could get spirit points for your organizations entered in the homecoming competition. TKE and ΑΦ definitely played the part in dressing up in wacky clothes and cheering on the team from beginning to end.

Fun Friday

Homecoming Friday was full of excitement from sunrise to sundown. It all started with the Panther Pep Rally for our football team. The rally had speeches from the coach and football players, music by the pep band and performances by the Florida Tech cheerleaders. Following the pep rally, the Florida Tech trolleys began shuttling everyone from campus to Downtown Melbourne for the Homecoming Fest. For this, the streets in downtown Melbourne close down and everyone is free to roam among food vendors and activities. Best of all, a stage is set up at the end of the street for musicians. This year’s main act was national recording artists Taking Back Sunday.

Saturday Festivities

Saturday morning started the festivities for the homecoming parade! It was our last event with TKE and ΑΦ together and it was awesome! We decided to take our theme and apply it outside of the box — “There is no place like a [soldier] homecoming.” Our float was designed to represent the United States soldiers coming home from WWII in New York City. Following the parade, the campus-wide tailgate party for the football game began full of fun, music, food and drinks. And then, finally, Florida Tech football won their first homecoming game 37-3!

I believe Florida Tech Homecoming 2013 was the best this school has ever seen. In the end, TKE and ΑΦ received second place in the overall competition, and even though I was disappointed for a moment, I remembered the friendships I gained and the amount of overwhelming memories created that I will never forget.