On December 10th the new Fall Ball dance will replace the Freshman Sophomore formal in hopes to raise the falling attendance.

“We are going to try something fresh,” Director of student activities Nicole Boyd said. “ We want to explore another option before we decide to get rid off it which will happen if the attendance doesn’t pick up.”

The reason that the dance will be discontinued if the attendance stays low is because it is the ticket sales that fund the dance, and without high enough ticket sales the school doesn’t have the budget to provide the services like a DJ, hot food, and a photo booth.

The dance is still only for freshmen and sophomores and will cost $10. The ticket sales begin a few weeks before the dance and students are not able to purchase tickets at the door. The dress code is still formal attire.

“If the attendance doesn’t go up this time it may be the last freshman/sophomore dance before we discontinue it,” Boyd said.

It was three years ago when the Junior/Senior winter formal was cancelled due to the same reasons that the Fall Ball faces. This left the juniors out in the cold with no formal dance while all other grade levels still had them.

According to Boyd one of the reasons that the dance was moved up to December was because a lot of students weren’t able to attend the spring dance due to too many detentions, and hopefully earlier in the school year students won’t have as many detentions to stop them from going to the dance.

The dance will be DJed by Monster DJ, the same group performs at all of the school dances, due to how well they work with students and how they play a diverse amount of music for students to enjoy. The DJ doesn’t get a playlist from the school but they perform mainly based off requests from the students, as long as they are school appropriate.

If the freshmen want to have a dance besides homecoming next year, they need to show up with numbers on December 10th, and should hope a lot of the current sophomores also go.

“If we can get half of the freshman and sophomore grades, that would be awesome,” said Boyd. “There will be good food, friends, and fun so I hope students will come.”

Despite the date moving up and the accommodations, some students still don’t want to participate in the dance.

“I’d rather stay at home, It’s just my preference,” sophomore Nev Collazo said.

“I went to the formal last year and it just wasn’t that exciting, and I feel like school dances besides prom won’t really contribute to my high school experience,” sophomore Ceti Gerst said.

The week leading up to the Fall Ball is Winter Spirit week, which previously did not happen until after winter break. The reason for this change was because last year the spirit week was the week directly after winter break. This led to little participation by the students so the administration elected to move up the week.

“With the earlier date the goal is to have more students eligible to go to the dance,” Sophomore Class President Grace Tabet said. “Students should go because it is a really great social event and the frosh/soph board is working really hard to make it special and a good time.”