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School spirit Ashland High School juniors Katya Gustafson and Ellie Carter paint a homecoming poster with events, including a parade scheduled for Oct. 12 through downtown Ashland. Mail Tribune / Denise Baratta Monday Oct 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Last year, a vague threat of gun violence wiped out Ashland High School’s homecoming parade. The year before, rain washed it out. Ashland High student body co-president Amelia Zeve has no idea what challenges, natural or otherwise, may threaten this year's homecoming festivities at her school, but she’s determined to make sure that its leadership does what it can to reboot the tradition. “It shook all of us up to have a shooting threat cancel our parade,” Zeve said. “So, yes, that’ll make it even tougher. I’m hoping that there’s not going to be any trepidation around it. I want this to be a positive thing. … I think that, definitely, not having it happen for the past two years will make it more of a challenge, but also even more of a rewarding payoff if we can make it work.” Weather permitting (rain is in the forecast), the parade is scheduled for Wednesday at 3 p.m. As in past years, it’ll start at the high school, head north down Siskiyou Boulevard and Lithia Way and circle around the Plaza before heading back down Main Street. It will end back at the high school. Some of the school’s class leaders were working toward that possible “payoff” Tuesday in a top-floor room of the humanities building, painting signs and posters that would either be hung around campus to help drum up support and awareness or decorate the parade floats themselves. Juniors Ellie Carter and Carly Joss sat at one table next to a stack of white sheets of paper and jars of paint, sophomore Alex Brehmer worked at another desk in the back of the room and sophomore Cole Daneman was also on hand to chip in. Most of the sheets painted in Ashland High red, white and powder blue during the second-period leadership class Tuesday will be taped up throughout the school this week. Since this year’s senior class is the only class to have actually experienced a homecoming parade while at the high school, part of the goal is to simply create awareness. “What we’re doing right now,” Brehmer said, “is we’re painting the posters to kind of let people know that it’s going on because the parade hasn’t happened in so long. We’re trying to let people know that it’s a thing.” Zeve said the plan is to have six or seven floats in the parade, which was nearly axed. Ashland High’s student leaders considered removing the parade from homecoming week, but instead decided to “ramp this thing up” and work toward making it as big as the city’s annual Fourth of July parade. Zeve knows that’s years away from becoming a reality, but she hopes the school’s decision to keep the parade going will inspire AHS alumni to rally around the event in the name of small-town pride. “I’ve reached out to the TV news stations and the newspapers,” Zeve said. “We’ve done some posters, word of mouth, we’ve reached out to the city. We’re really doing everything that we can, but the reality is that it’s probably not going to get started until it just kind of ignites by itself.” Last year on the day of the homecoming parade an Ashland resident emailed to Ashland police screenshots of a former AHS student’s Facebook page that included a photo of a firearm and two statements alluding to a desire to exact revenge on people in his life. The police determined that the gun photo was widely available online but the homecoming parade was cancelled as a precaution. The original plan was to reschedule the parade, but that never happened. On Monday, Joss took a short break between posters to explain the depth of Ashland High’s homecoming push, which may also soon include a social-media campaign. “We have separate committees that are in charge of all the things involved in homecoming,” she said. “There’s an assembly crew, there’s a royalty crew, a court crew, the decorations committee. And we’re in charge of advertising.” “We’re just trying to make homecoming week be a good overall experience,” added Daneman. The decision to bring back the parade did not come without some debate, Carter said. “Originally, our thought process was, we’re not going to have the parade because it’s too much work,” she said. “But then we kind of decided that homecoming is not just for the high school and leadership to show what they have. It’s for the alumni that come back home. That’s what it’s all about.” “It was a good excuse to boost our school spirit,” Joss said. When asked about the feedback they’ve received, the students creating posters Tuesday said there’s not much of a buzz on campus yet. Still, Brehmer added, they have received support from elsewhere. “I told my dad about the parade,” she said. “I was like, ‘We’re doing a homecoming parade; I’ve never even heard of a homecoming parade.’ My dad was like, ‘It’s actually pretty common for people to have homecoming parades.’ So my dad thinks that it’s a great idea.” The parade will include the entire homecoming court, which is made up of three students from the freshman, sophomore and junior classes and nine seniors. They’ll ride through town either in cars or on the floats and wave at the crowd. Zeve is hoping the rain stays away long enough for the parade to make a triumphant return. “It’s not the Fourth of July,” she said, “but we’re hoping to get it there someday.”