A Gator Filled Weekend

Anabella Oleandi & Lola Pollock ~  October 2025

This past weekend was one of our favorite weekends of the year: Homecoming Weekend! The week of homecoming, Nardin students participated in spirit week, with themes like Country vs Country Club, Pajama Day, and Surfers vs Bikers. Friday was our Lip-sync Battle and Walk-A-Thon half-day; Saturday morning is our annual Powderpuff Flag-Football Tournament; and Saturday night is the long-awaited homecoming.

Kicking off our Homecoming weekend with the annual Lip-Sync Battle, each house got an hour to choreograph dances and clean their, soon to be judged, lip-syncing skills. The theme of the battle is our Walk-A-Thon theme: Tail of the Gator. Our winning house was Cleveland, with Tudor and Elmwood tying for second, and Delaware coming in third. Cleveland’s theme, Tailgating, involved the Buffalo Bills “Shout” song, “We Are the Champions” by Queen, and ended with our very own Ms. Swanson jumping off the stage onto a table, breaking it in half. The video of Ms. Swanson reached an incredible 1.1M views on Instagram. Following the battle, Walk-A-Thon commenced. The walk was 4.5 miles throughout Elmwood Village, ending with pizza and ice cream at Nardin.

Saturday was quite eventful, packed with Powderpuff and Homecoming festivities. Nardin Elementary’s Pep Squad performed during the halftime of the flag football games. There were many activities going on including pumpkin painting, kickball, and a Nardin merch stand. For flag football, each team played against each other in a tournament. The winning team was I’d Rather Not, in Lilo and Stitch shirts. “I have never won Powderpuff before, and it was so exciting to win my senior year!” commented Paige Stoekckl (‘26), who was a part of the winning team and has participated in Powderpuff for the past three years. Her favorite Powderpuff memory is making team t-shirts before each Powderpuff. One of the parent coaches, Paul Oleandi, who coached the sophomore team Blue Crew talked about the friendly competition and the companionship between the girls, “Everyone was very focused and had good sportsmanship.” He also mentioned Blue Crew’s excellent performance and how excited he is to coach the team again next year. 

To close out one of the best weekends of the year was our annual Homecoming Dance. The dance was held in the gym with amazing chaperones and a DJ. When asked about Homecoming, senior Anna Wurst (‘26) she answered “It is definitely sad that this was my last Homecoming, but I’m just so glad that I got to spend it with all of my friends and just have some time to enjoy being with everyone without the stress of school work and classes.” Her favorite homecoming memory is dancing with her friends throughout the night. 

Homecoming weekend is one of the best weekends of the year, and we believe it is clear: being with our Nardin Community is what makes the weekend so lovely.

Photos by Claire Cipolla '28