On October 10, 2025, the annual East Homecoming Dance will be held from 8-11 p.m. For most East students, getting ready usually begins a few days or hours before the dance, with anything from clothes shopping to nail appointments. For members of the East speech and debate team, however, homecoming preparation starts over half a year earlier.

Starting in the spring, reservations are made for the DJ. After that, preparations pause until the school year starts, when the speech team meets to discuss the theme.

“I’m [usually] trying to think of something that’s going to be easy for decorations,” Nick Herink, head coach for the speech team, stated. “And then once we pick a theme, we’ll kind of start brainstorming decoration ideas. There’s a lot of different moving pieces. Some of them are more exciting and fun than others.”

It’s not just Herink doing the work, though. Students and their parents are expected to contribute, through actions like volunteering during and after school and providing donations. This year, however, students get to play a larger role in homecoming planning than previous years.

“It’s really student-led, especially this year,” Claire Rooney, senior speech member said. “We kind of changed it where there’s more leadership positions, and it’s more so the students that get to decide what it looks like. There’s a lot more of us just buying decorations rather than having to try to make all of them while still prepping for the upcoming speech season.”

With great power comes great responsibility, though, as speech and debate members take time out of their day to make homecoming the best it can be.

“Students are expected to do all of the setup, so they’re the ones who are in charge.” Herink said. They designed the tickets, they designed all the signage, and they set up all of the decorations on the day of the dance, and then in the evening, they clean everything up. So they do quite a bit of the legwork on everything.”

Apart from being a fun night out for students, homecoming serves another main purpose. The ticket sales and concessions revenue provide much of the funds for East’s forensics students to compete. Having over 150 students participating, and the longest season of any NSAA activity, speech and debate requires a significant amount of money for expenses like tournament entries, judge costs, and practice materials.

“The money that we’re allotted by the district really only gets us through probably about one-half to three-fourths of the season,” Herink said. “The homecoming dance revenue really ensures that every kid who wants to compete in speech and debate has the opportunity to do so through the end of the season.”

While the homecoming dance and district funds cover most of the costs for the team, other supplemental fundraisers are organized and planned throughout the year.

“Right now, we’re planning to do a bake sale around the holidays,” Emerson Trompke, a senior debate member, said. “We sell East spirit bracelets pretty consistently throughout the year, too.” Trompke is on the debate fundraising committee, which meets biweekly for most of the school year.

Thanks to the hard work of the Speech and Debate team, homecoming is something worth looking forward to, and thanks to the students of Lincoln East, the Spartan Forensics teams are able to compete for another season.