The Best Buddies club had their biggest event of the year, the Semiformal Dance, on Friday, March 16 at the Italian American Club. This is the fourth year Best Buddies has held a Semiformal Dance. The Semiformal Dance became a part of the club when one member of the club, Peter Clow, asked for a dance. The dance is always a great success because of all the time and preparation senior President Michael Hebner, Ms. Ryan Connors, Mrs. Kelly Udahl, and Mrs. Mary Caine put into the event. The directors of the club started planning the dance two months in advance, and the week of the dance they spent every day working and planning. The directors planned the decorations, food, music, and different prizes for students. Each year the number of students who attend the dance increases, and this year the event brought the most students the dance has had in the past four years, with just under 50 students at the dance.
The night begins with the students attending the dance arriving at the Italian American Club in semi-formal attire at 6 pm. “One of my favorite parts of the dance is seeing all students entering the hall all dressed up compared to how they look in school,” said Ms. Connors. When the student enter the hall, they have a chance to win the door prize–a bucket of popcorn, movie tickets, and lots of candy. Hebner picked the winner from raffle and waited to announce the name until the end of the dance. “It’s fun when everyone starts dance and you can see their personality come out,” said Ms. Connors.On the dance floor, the students started a train with every student and a few directors in the train dancing around the hall. Members of the club were dancing together all night long. The club members all danced together and did dances like the Cha Cha Slide. In between the dancing and socializing, the students could make a guess of how much candy was in 10 different jars, with a chance of winning the jar of candy. The different type of guessing jars consited of M&Ms, skittles, Reeses, Jolly Ranchers, Starburts, Double Bubble, Hershey Kisses, and more.
After two hours of dancing, cake and ice cream were served to the members of the dance and the prizes began to be announced. For the guessing jars, Hebner won the Reeses, senior Lindsey Wassel won the jar of Swedish Fish, juniors Jennifer Mazzotta and Danielle Levya guessed the correct number of M&Ms and Jolly Ranchers, and freshman Ryan Cisternelli guessed the right number of Starbursts. The winner of the door prize was freshman Hannah Hamilton. For smaller door prizes, students had a chance of winning gift cards or candy boxes. Senior Katie Cavaca won a box of candy and junior Raymond Mortali won a Papa Ginos gift card.
The best buddies’ semi-formal dance was another success for the club this year. The directors hope that the number of students attending the dance will continue to increase each year the dance is held. With the year winding down, the club only has the second Bowling Night in April and the Senior Goodbye Dinner in May left for events in the school year, but the club is already starting to plan how next year will pan out.
