Eudora Reschedules Halloween

Story by Melanie Reese

Ask any Eudora child when Halloween is, and they’ll tell you with excitement. The famous holiday is known for its costumes, ghosts and trick-or-treating on the very last day of October. Every year that is, except for 2002. Instead of ending October that year handing out candy to energized young children, the supportive community put on their coats and scarves to watch the local EHS football team.

         Mayor Ron Conner and the city council made a decision to push the city’s Halloween back a day to November 1, to ensure a safer night for wandering children. With the high number of parents, students and community members expected to attend the game, the mayor and city council feared the game traffic could endanger the kids.

        “In comparison of how football games were like at Laws Field, think of what [the traffic] is like during the Homecoming Parade, but later in the evening in the dark,” said Bonnie Daigh, a math teacher at Eudora, who experienced this event firsthand.

        The 2002 Eudora High football team was ranked no. 5 in class 4A and was on a winning streak. The team  had won 10 straight games for the first time in decades and the community as a whole was bursting with excitement in support of the young athletes. After only recently making the jump up to 4A, Eudora benefited greatly from first-year coach Gregg Webb. Webb went on to coach  Eudora for ten years and sent his team to sub-state nine times. With high hopes of making it to state, turnout was expected to be extremely high as the Cardinals played against Mill Valley on Halloween night.

 On a typical Eudora Halloween evening, attendance would have been unremarkable. Most families did not celebrate Halloween in Eudora, nor did they typically choose to put up with cold winds to cheer on high school football boys. Instead, a majority of families travelled to Lawrence on the night of Halloween.

        Even though the turnout wasn’t quite as overwhelming as the city expected, Eudora became known as the town that postponed Halloween for a football game. The story of our little town’s Halloween night was on local and national media, and even the David Letterman show poked fun at the little town that tried to move Halloween.

Ever since that October night in 2002, the town of Eudora has kept Halloween on the traditional night, no matter what date a football game fell on. Just last year in 2014, Halloween was the same night as an EHS football game. Instead of rescheduling, students came dressed up in their favorite costume and cheered on their peers.