Junior Class Halloween Carnival returns

After three years of other horrors, the junior class carnival finally returned to Nome for Halloween. Eager to trade one kind of mask for another, kids and their families packed the Nome Elementary Gym Friday and Saturday nights for games, plays and a haunted house.

This year, they raised over $13,000 which goes towards putting on prom and graduation, smashing the old record of $10,000, and roughly doubling the average of past years. This year, the carnival’s lead organizer was Junior Class Advisor Rachel Finney.

At the entrance, families bought tickets which they would later exchange for participation in the cake walk or face painting. Lines for attractions, and in particular the haunted house, crisscrossed and stretched throughout the school, creating a friendly chaos of costumed kids. While many of the older kids said that the haunted house could have been scarier, those interviews were interrupted by crying children running out of the room.

For those who didn’t have time to make one, Nome-Beltz Volleyball players were in the commons selling costumes to raise money for the team. Coach Veronica Alviso explained that, like the clothing swap they organize at the beginning of the school year, this is a great opportunity to save gently used items from going into the trash, allowing people to share in the joy of dressing up for Halloween.

Fellow Junior Class Advisor Rosa Wright, dressed in all black and a green velvet cape, stood on stage in the commons commentating the costume contest. Dressed as pirates and Pokémon, witches and princesses, hand-made and store bought, kids twirled and menaced across the room showing off. Blow-up costumes appeared particularly popular this year, with kids riding dinosaurs or being abducted by aliens.