Imagine you woke up in the morning and looked past your window only to find one thing: toilet paper! “How and why did someone do this to me?” you might ask. Thankfully, I am now going to answer this simple question by going behind the scenes of what the teepeeing tradition looks like at Crystal Lake South for Homecoming.
Homecoming at Crystal Lake South, along with the teepeeing tradition, has been going on for a very long time. Being on the dance team and having coaches that have been on the dance team, I know that this tradition has been kept alive for generations at South as my coaches have many good memories from their teepee night! Currently, I know that this tradition still lives to its full potential by being a very fun activity to participate in. Many groups involved may actually look forward to teepee night more than the Homecoming dance itself!
Speaking of the groups involved, who gets to participate in this teepeeing tradition? Currently, there are 3 main groups that participate: the dance team, the cheer team, and the varsity football team. The people who get to teepee the houses themselves are the members of the cheer and dance team. On the other end, the varsity football players are the ones who have their houses teepeed. Having your house teepeed before the homecoming game is a sign of good luck and an honor for the varsity football players to hopefully inspire them to do amazing!
But do not fret! Any varsity football player is asked if they would like to have their house “decorated” before teepee night to see who wants to have their house teepeed because doing it without their permission would surely be illegal!
Now, let’s dive in deep to what teepee day looks like in one scenario: the dance team.
The day starts like any other Thursday. Every student is just doing their schoolwork, but for a select few, there is more underlying excitement building up for the day ahead. Towards the end of the school day is when one of the first major Homecoming traditions takes place. This would be reading to the elementary school students. The football, dance, and cheer teams all participate in reading books to elementary school students at their schools as a fun little event in the elementary schools. This is a very fun opportunity as you get to read a fun book to a group of kids, reminisce on the good memories from when you were in elementary school, and perhaps say “hi” to an old teacher you had when you were a kid!
After reading to the elementary schools, everyone goes home and prepares for the long night ahead. The start of this night is with a dance practice. During Homecoming week, the dance team practices every day to make sure that their skills are refined for the many performances at the football game, pep rally, and possibly the Homecoming dance itself! What comes after this vital practice would be a short break that is used by many members to re-calibrate and drivers to decorate their cars. Drivers must have a very well decorated car as their whole group that they are assigned to drive will be seeing it for the rest of the night. Common decorations for the cars include window paint that includes phrases like “Hoco”, “CLSDT 2023”, group member names, and other fun drawings that make a car unique!
After the drivers make their masterpieces, everyone goes to the front lawn of the school near the front entrance. Here, there is a tradition for seniors. The tradition is to paint the rock and tree in the front of the school. Each senior on the team paints only one letter at a time from a message carefully selected by the dance team. This makes it vital for each senior to not mess up because it will hopefully last for an entire year. When it is their turn to paint a letter, each senior shares a story from one of their favorite moments being on the dance team.
Finally, from this celebration starts the actual teepeeing process. Each dancer is assigned to a driver that will drive them around for the night and a group of two drivers that they will be with at each house they arrive at. Everyone goes with their drivers to an assigned restaurant, and from that restaurant, each dancer goes with their driver to their first teepee house of many.
At that teepee house is where a majority of the fun comes from at night. Anyone is free to hurl toilet paper up at a tree, express their inner Vincent Van Gogh with chalk on the sidewalk, make a fun maze out of toilet paper on the ground, say “hi” to the Ring doorbell, and chat a little bit along the way. However, be sure to look out for a car or a creak from the door as being caught would not be good. Anyone who notices something like this will probably announce the agreed upon secret word to the group that basically means “hit the deck!” The secret words are very precious, though, and they are not to be shared. I have known 3 secret words from my years participating in this tradition, but I’m not going to tell you- or else they would not be a secret!
Overall, the tradition of teepeeing at Crystal Lake South is one mystery that many people probably do not know much about. From the history of the tradition, the current practices that are in place today, and the many joyous activities, hopefully you have learned more about the behind the scenes work of Homecoming Teepeeing.
