On Tuesday, Eastern hosted a Spirit Challenge, an event for students to compete in games such as bean-bag-toss and tic-tac-toe to earn prizes at the end of the night.  

Students could earn points towards organizations they are associated with, so the organization could earn points and at the end of the week, they could win prizes. 

This was the first year that this event took place.  

Ashley Richardson, a senior special education major, worked with the University Board as the Homecoming Coordinator. Richardson talks about how the new addition is an improvement to homecoming week.  

“I think as far as homecoming goes, we’ve added more into our spirit challenge, which just gets different organizations involved,” Richardson said. “We’ve also kind of improved almost everything honestly. Just how things work, the functionality, and stuff like that.” 

Richardson also said that the expectation for her is that students just come out and have fun.   

Kristal Munoz, a criminology/criminal justice major, works for the University Board. It is her first year working with them as well. 

Munoz worked with the Latin American Student Organization, LASO, last year and gained exposure with the University Board. 

“I volunteered a bunch of times with the [University Board] events, so although it wasn’t like an actual position, I was around the events quite a bit, so I got to see all that,” Munoz said.  

Munoz also talks about how the homecoming events motivates students to get involved.  

“It’s one of the events we do to boost panther pride and morale and kind of get the [Registered Student Organizations] on campus involved,” Munoz said.  

Munoz did not want to have expectations and wanted to remain neutral on her personal feelings about the event.  

“I try not to [have expectations] because I wasn’t really a part of the leadership part of this last year,” Munoz said. “I don’t want to disappoint myself [by like] overhyping myself, and I also don’t want to underwhelm myself, as well. So, I try to stay neutral about things. I’m glad to see a lot of [students] came out today.” 

Anahi Osorio, a junior exercise science major, was present at the event. On Monday night, she was crowned as the 2022 Homecoming Princess and wanted to show off her crown. 

“[I wanted to] have fun so being a little interactive with everyone,” Osorio said. “I know that this school year has been a little bit stressful, so this was a little stress reliever for me.”

Osorio said that she enjoyed the bean-bag-toss game. 

“[It’s] something in my family,” Osorio said. “We compete over this all of the time.” 

Osorio said that if the event were to happen again, that she would “definitely” come back.  

Eastern will be hosting multiple homecoming events throughout the week to boost morale in students and to allow them to come out, have fun and get involved. 

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at 581-2812 or at cahardy@eiu.edu.