There’s newly-crowned royalty on the Riverbank High campus these days, as Homecoming Week festivities wound down with the crowning of a King and Queen. The coronation came at halftime of the Riverbank-Ripon varsity boys basketball game on Friday, Jan. 28.
All the candidates were introduced to the crowd, along with their parent or escorts, then the King was announced, followed by the Queen.
Damien Bolanos was named Winter Homecoming King, then, right after, his girlfriend, Monica Hernandez, was announced as Winter Homecoming Queen.
Other candidates were: Cheyenne Torres and Aaron Loaiza; Clarissa Verduzco and Anthony Leon; Valeria Valenzuela and Isaac Estrada; and Kayci Blevins and Juan Reyes.
The game and the ceremony completed a week of celebration for the Winter Homecoming. Those final events also included a massive Homecoming Rally in the Angelo Novi Stadium at the end of the school day. (See photos, Page A2.)
The rally included the usual cheering contests, but also involved team competition on the track in front of the home grandstand.
There were several heats, consisting of different relays: old favorites included a balloon break relay, where competitors took large inflated balloons and had to break them without using their hands, racing back and forth.
The most used method of destruction was simply squeezing the balloon between the bodies of the two teammates.
Another event consisted of a water balloon toss. It was contested between the pairs of king and queen candidates.
They would start two steps apart, with the thrower spinning once around before tossing the balloon to his or her companion. With each throw, contestants would make one step further apart, as well as adding one more rotation to the spinning before the toss.
Since the water balloons were small, the fallout landed mostly on the track, and participants didn’t really get wet.
The final event of the afternoon was a series of tugs-of-war.
Five members of each grade level came down to the field, grabbing the ends of the rope and pulling. It was quickly determined, as one might suspect, that members of the senior class prevailed.
However, as a bonus, the 2022 tuggers were put up against a group of RHS staff members and teachers. They promptly took up the rope, dug in their heels, and let the rope go when the seniors pulled on it.
Regrouping, the teachers were able to go at it one more time, and persevered against the students.
