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Restored: With Student Input, NCHS Pep Rally Returns To Homecoming Week

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Because New Canaan High School students started meeting at the end of last academic year and through the summer to plan for a Homecoming Week pep rally, the popular event will be restored one year after administrators cancelled it, officials say. Student Council representatives, varsity team captains and others met with administrators to plan Spirit Week activities and, as a result, a well-loved school tradition will once again be held on the Friday headed into Homecoming Weekend, NCHS Principal Bill Egan said. “For me, it was something that I wanted to bring back history and traditions of the school, and that is something that the students had talked about being a big deal,” Egan told NewCanaanite.com. “But with that comes a responsibility, too, and students were actually planning before I started, there were groups of students meeting with adults in building and trying to change activities and make it different. And they worked really hard to do that.

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Homecoming Dance Cancelled ‘Due to Insufficient Ticket Sales’

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[Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with comments from New Canaan Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Luizzi.]

New Canaan High School administrators have cancelled the annual Homecoming Dance due to an apparent lack of interest. In an email sent Friday afternoon to parents, Senior Class Advisors Paul Gallo and Kim Palmer said: “Due to insufficient ticket sales the Homecoming Dance is being cancelled. Ticket refunds will be available during lunch on Monday and Tuesday at the refund table being set up in the cafeteria.”

Reached by NewCanaanite.com, New Canaan Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Bryan Luizzi said that attendance at the Homecoming Dance “has been dwindling for years.”

“Certainly for the last five or seven years it has been declining steadily,” he said. The school needed to sell about 250 tickets to break even and when they sold 100, a decision was made to cancel it. “In my experience it’s not unusual in towns that the proms are still very well attended, but the regular dances are maybe not as well attended as they were seven, 10 years ago,” Luizzi said. It isn’t clear when was the last time the Homecoming Dance was cancelled.

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Students Petition District To Restore New Canaan High School Pep Rally

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New Canaan High School junior Mike Cognetta, 16—a varsity lacrosse, wrestling and football (safety) athlete—says his experience of the annual Prep Rally at Dunning Field has been that it’s a mutually supportive, bonding experience for students and teachers alike. “It really holds us up and brings us together more when we’re supporting one thing—our pride for the school—it just feels good,” Cognetta said Friday afternoon from inside CT Sandwich Co. on Pine Street, a popular spot. The teen’s signature is one of more than 600 on a petition to restore the Pep Rally, which he said has been cancelled by the district after one student came to last year’s event inebriated. The Pep Rally typically is held on the Friday evening of Spirit Week, leading into New Canaan High School Homecoming Weekend, which is next weekend.