Lebanon
“I can’t fasten them!” Jones says in alarm to her boyfriend, Erik Spaulding, bending to fiddle with a strap on her red high heels. “Now I’m stressed.”
Moving slowly down the hall are 270 students, most paired off as couples. It’s May 13, prom night, and the four-hour celebration begins with the Grand March, in which participants walk through a decorative arch and then the length of the gym on a red carpet. The bleachers on one side are rolled out and packed with family, friends, teachers and community members. Seemingly every other person clutches a smartphone or a camera, and there’s expectancy in the stifling air.
As each couple or solo student reaches the arch, principal Ian Smith announces them via handheld microphone in his sonorous voice. In the background plays a satellite radio channel featuring the hits of singers such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. About a dozen girls lacrosse players march, some with male friends, some with romantic interests and others, such as Lily Hier and Julie Barber, with pal Sarah Montana.
Barber, who uses a wheelchair, recently exited a relationship and wasn’t planning on attending prom. However, Hier, the team’s senior co-captain, wouldn’t hear of it. She and Montana became Barber’s dates for the evening. Hier’s been battling strep throat and a cold for a week, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she energetically pushes Barber throughout the night.
“It’s great to see everyone so beautiful,” says sophomore lacrosse player Anna Wolke, who attended prom as a freshman. Juniors and seniors attend and may invite an underclassman. “Especially when you’re used to seeing them in sports stuff.”
The prom itself begins an hour later at a West Lebanon hotel ballroom. The backup at the entrance is caused by the boys being patted down for contraband by assistant principal Todd Matte, physical education teacher Les Lawrence and football coach Chris Childs. At one point, three sets of hands swarm over a skinny attendee, who looks taken aback. The girls, lining up in front of a female chaperone, must lift their skirts to their knees.
There are about 15 tables on either side of the ballroom, most of which go unoccupied. The majority of the students crowd onto a dance floor roughly 25 feet square, sometimes dancing and sometimes not. A diminutive DJ works a pair of electronic turntables and laptop computers, spinning clean versions of everything from Iggy Azalea’s Fancy to Fifth Harmony’s That’s My Girl. Outside the ballroom doors, a bartender serves up various fruit juice and soda mixtures, cotton candy and popcorn machines disgorge their treats and a mobile photo booth with various silly props does a steady business.
Out on the dance floor, principal Smith makes quick work of a male reveler who’s carried a chair into the crowd and briefly gyrates atop it. Childs, who along with his wife, Marilou, is in his sixth year as a chaperone, grins while watching from the back of the ballroom.
“It’s neat to see the boys in a different and uncertain forum,” Childs say. “Some of them are stiff and don’t know how to act. My guys may be OK playing in front of 500 people on a football field, but this is outside their comfort zone.”
Lacrosse player Lexie Roberts waits in line for a drink with boyfriend, Hartford High baseball player Walker Farley. The Hurricanes played this morning, and Farley is looking a little peaked. The couple will do prom again in a week, this time at his school. Today’s preparations for Roberts and various friends and teammates began at her Poverty Lane house at 1 p.m., and some participants had hair appointments before that and after an early-morning lacrosse practice.
“I just concentrated on getting to the end of the carpet without tripping on my dress,” Roberts said of the march. “It’s fun for all of us to dress up and be all girly, but our personalities are the same as they are on the field.”
Boys lacrosse player Jordan Hammond sails past, rocking a blue tuxedo and aviator sunglasses. The rising heat in the ballroom can be felt coming out its three doors. Boys slouch around with sweat-soaked hair and loosened shirt collars, and girls pat their foreheads with cocktail napkins and take painful, mincing steps on feet unaccustomed to heels. One of the girls track team members is wearing Chuck Taylor retro basketball sneakers, which is definitely a smart move.
The DJ puts on Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. Students queue at a table loaded with chicken wings, mini-cheeseburgers and pizza. Hier and Barber, back from a cool-down minute outside, hustle to the middle of the dance floor, Hier moving rhythmically as she pushes her friend. Arms raised, faces lit by strobe lights, the Class of 2017 celebrates as if its members will be young forever.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.