The band celebrated band homecoming, nicknamed BOCO organized by the Cougar Band Council, on Friday, October 18th in the main commons after missing homecoming because of schedule conflicts with the Bands of America competition.

“BOCO was always something we’ve always been interested in, but this year because we had a competition on the actual day of homecoming, Mr. Jones basically gave us the go-ahead on it,” Caren Koh, the president of the Cougar Band Council, said. “It was just like never a thing because we didn’t have the resources at the time or reasons for it.”

The Cougar Band Council officially announced BOCO at a pregame dinner in September, however, Ray Jones, the head band director first informed the Cougar Band Council about the schedule conflict towards the end of the last school year after receiving the 2019-2020 football schedule. BOCO was first brought up at a meeting over the summer and the band council coordinated with the band boosters, the band directors, and Encore to plan for the event.

“I thought they took it pretty well because they know we’re in competition mode, and we offered this up from the beginning,” Jones said. “This band homecoming thing was in the works soon as we saw there was a contest. I didn’t have to do anything other than reserve this space.”

200 band and non-band members attended and the total proceeds went towards paying for the expenses of the event such as renting the commons, hiring a photographer and DJ, providing decorations and food. The cost of tickets for band members was $10, non-band members was $15. Students in the student leadership team received a discount.

“Everything people paid for was spent on actual homecoming cause our focus wasn’t to raise a lot of money,” Koh said. “We did profit some and that could be used for the band, but the main purpose was just to give everyone some fun. We worked really hard, especially with the marching season, and it’s a lot of work and then because we got to miss homecoming like we just wanted us to have this opportunity to just relax.” 

Voting for BOCO king, queen, princes, and princesses took place during band class. The freshman prince was Kent Spark, the freshman princess was Kristina Kesterke, the sophomore prince was Cameron Emrie, the sophomore princess was Jada Joshua, the junior prince was Ian Donaldson, the junior princess was Michelle Amezcua, the senior king was Mathieu Van Dijke, and the senior queen was Ivana Heigl-Maza.

“I was a bit surprised because I have a friend group in the band, but I didn’t think the juniors would vote for me,” Donaldson, the junior prince said. “I think it was way more efficient because in regular HOCO there’s a person on band and they always win because there’s the entire band voting for that one specific person, but this made it more fair. It’s not just the drum majors: it’s the people who are marching and the front ensemble, the encore also.”

Other schools who started doing BOCO because of similar conflicts have kept doing it as a band tradition, but the fate of BOCO at Cinco Ranch is undecided. BOCO is one of many socials organized by the Cougar Band Council. Their next event is the Christmas Social.

“I wasn’t sad that we missed HOCO,” Jada Joshua, the sophomore princess said. “My BOCO experience has been awesome. I know everybody here. It would be cool if this became a tradition.”