Teamwork Floats Parade Presence

What people witnessed at the Parade of Lights was a fanfare of lights and celebration welcoming the Christmas season. What many didn't see is the work and organization required to make the celebration a success.

Among the many floats in the parade, Sidney High School was represented by the "BTS on the Polar Express" float. The float is the result of 247 students coming together at various levels. The Unified Raiders, girls basketball team, Art Club, Danz and cheer teams, boys basketball team, and wrestling team took part in the process. The project spanned from the creative minds to fashioning the pieces to fit correctly.

"When Shelby (Price) brought up the idea of turning a truck into a locomotive, I started sketching ideas," said Nathan Barnes.

Price held meetings at the beginning of the year with the each of the high school grades. The freshmen chose to work on the Parade of Lights and Challenge Day.

"We started meeting weekly in September to plan with an average of about 20 freshmen at the meetings. We slowly grew and added some older kids and the Just For Kix group in the initial planning process," Price said.

Karlee Jones said four students walked into Price's office and asked about doing a BTS-Christmas movie tie-in for the float theme. BTS is a Korean kid-pop music group, the students said, and the parade had a Christmas movie theme. The students decided to follow the "Polar Express" movie theme: Pick Up Polar Express. They float team adopted the quote "Love Yourself First."

"We had tried to start a flash mob, but due to so many students being involved in other activities we scrapped that idea," Price said.

The project was done with no budget.