Month after shooting, Evergreen High holds emotional homecoming: ‘We can be kids again’

EVERGREEN One by one they filtered into an empty Evergreen High gymnasium greeted by a tunnel of pompoms and an outpouring of gratification they hadn t felt for weeks The kids were here and they all carried hallmarks of one of the happiest nights of small-town USA Specific wore football jerseys Several wore blue-and-yellow Cougars face paint Selected wore blue-and-white pinstriped overalls Greater part improbably wore smiles The only reminder that there was a shooting on this campus shortly over a month ago in fact was the slew of Evergreen Strong shirts across the crowd These students needed nothing else Their town is covered in signs that remember the day They needed a shred of normalcy to rip them out of the monotony of tragedy and so the Learner Senate pulled together a homecoming assembly Friday afternoon And the games began They took turns spinning on plastic bats and diving through hurdles for relay races They scrambled through bleachers to find pairs of socks in a scavenger hunt Each grade took turns belting out different songs in a karaoke contest and the seniors didn t hold back with Nicki Minaj s Starships We re higher than a mother expletive Everyone laughed No teachers objected There have been much greater problems at play I was gonna vote for the juniors too one trainer working as a judge for karaoke commented to the seniors Until you guys dropped a gratuitous mofo ' Outside these walls a tight-knit mountain town of fewer than has been trying to come to terms with the event that shattered their reality after a teenager at Evergreen brought a gun to school and shot two of his fellow classmates before shooting himself The adults are trying to solve why And how And how to not let this happen again They should be taking care of the students as Eric Martinez says owner of local cafe staple Java Groove Inside these walls though on Friday s homecoming at Evergreen High the kids were all right It s our time to come together as a school and a group and say no to the hate -year-old Tyler Guyton stated And the violence And the exclusion And the heartbreak And the grief And say no for this week for this weekend We can have fun he continued And we can be kids again Population help On Wednesday Sept Shellene Ellington s son sent her a text Mom shooter Developing shooter Ellington thought this meant a drill Evergreen High was supposed to have one just a minimal days earlier after all that got rescheduled So she called her son a freshman to tell him this was in fact just a drill She heard distant screams behind him when he picked up No mom her son reported her Ellington remembered I m running home He had sprinted out of the cafeteria and into the woods behind Evergreen along with a handful of other classmates Ellington hopped in her car and sped over to a stretch of Jefferson County Road that ran past town finding her son and about other kids hiding between a couple of cars parked off the road She slid open the door to her GMC Yukon waved them all in and sped back to her house to let their parents know they were safe People wait to reunite with students at the Evergreen Library after a shooting at Evergreen High School in Evergreen Colorado on Wednesday Sept Photo by Hyoung Chang The Denver Post It s kinda strange I picked up kids that I didn t really know Ellington remembered Like I knew maybe three of them But now she mentioned sobs catching in her throat those kids hug me Evergreen Ellington noted is an unincorporated society It does not have its own police department It does not have any city regime The closest hospital she pointed is in Lakewood They are used to helping each other out as Ellington mentioned without the help of any city infrastructure The school debuted a new set of bleachers this fall down at the football field which aside from a grant of through T-Mobile came entirely through the region raising more than as Evergreen s Parent Coach Learner Association president Cindy Mazeika disclosed Majority every single business along Evergreen s main drag has pulled its weight in certain way for neighborhood relief Chelsea Treinen the owner of Sweetwater Boutique came up with the idea to plant yellow blue and white flags around the area as a show of strength Martinez has helped raise money for shooting victim Matthew Silverstone as Silverstone s sisters work at Java Coffee Public members have been donating meals every night of the week to Silverstone s family Ellington noted with different people signed up to deliver meals every day through New Year s I ve never seen a public pull together like this before explained Brian Peluso general manager at the Muddy Buck Cafe It s absolutely amazing Everybody demanded to be a part of it Peluso continued Everybody longed to have their hand in the healing process so to speak And it was fabulous to watch That healing process though has brought complex questions The Jefferson County Parent-Teacher Association Ellington reported is holding an open forum this upcoming week for families to air their concerns A full-time school stock officer has been placed on campus after none was present at the time of the shooting Evergreen is trying out a black Labrador named Oat on campus as Mazeika announced to sniff out gunpowder The neighborhood is engaged in debate over whether to introduce metal detectors An officer walks outside Evergreen High School before the school's homecoming football match in Evergreen Colorado on Friday Oct Photo by Hyoung Chang The Denver Post But the reality of a feasible threat is still in the back of students minds as one Evergreen apprentice stated The Denver Post on Friday And the locality of Evergreen a place where Peluso and Martinez and a multitude of more moved to for a quiet mountain paradise to raise a family is still reeling I think it kind of shattered that a little bit that it s not safe Treinen reported But is anywhere really immune from something like that happening And I think no Learner pride Just a insufficient days after the shooting the school s Trainee Senate went to every place in Evergreen that it thought could feasibly host a homecoming dance as Guyton noted There was a quick decision by the apprentice body through conversations with administration to try to pull together a homecoming for the weekend of Oct But all too promptly realized they couldn t host a dance in Evergreen High s gym It would be dark It was too soon They moved Saturday night s dance to Evergreen Elks Lodge and made admission free for all students Students at Evergreen Guyton stated have been longing for a moment to reconnect with their society at large To feel as he declared like a school again This was it Unfortunately a lot of us have had to grow up super fast It s not fair that a -year-old has to become an adult in one day Guyton commented Schools from around JeffCo pitched in as Evergreen athletic director Maddy Hornecker narrated The Post Bear Creek High designed posters Dakota Ridge brought in a coffee cart on Tuesday morning Ralston Valley helped plan Friday s assembly Columbine High helped write the halftime script for Friday night s football competition Emma Cox prepares to cheer during Evergreen High School's homecoming football match in Evergreen Colorado on Friday Oct Photo by Hyoung Chang The Denver Post The Novice Senate at Evergreen too tried to think of every conceivable angle as memories of Sept still hit Guyton when a loud noise echoes in Evergreen s halls There would be no loud confetti poppers instead the students shot off streamers inside the gymnasium The school provided spare rooms too for students to sit and talk who didn t feel confident gathering for the assembly It s significant that no one feels alone stated senior Will Carlin who helped plan the assembly Obviously you can be alone and sometimes it s part of how people process but it s vital that everyone knows you have someone around At that moment sitting in the bleachers after the assembly a fellow trainee high-fived him It s major Carlin continued that everyone knows that people are there to care about you As the sun disappeared Friday and group members bundled up Evergreen Strong T-shirts in jackets the crowd moved down to the football field And on the first drive of Evergreen s Friday night matchup with Skyview a throng of hundreds stamped their feet against the metal of the stands the bleachers they d built with those own same feet I don t think anybody is OK Guyton announced But compared to where we were a month ago we re really good