Homecoming is always a fun week. From Celebrity Look-alike Day to School Spirit Day, from the parade to the crowning of a new queen, the activities are fun and the bonding opportunities abound.

But perhaps nowhere is there more fun - and more intensity - than on the football field when the girls take the field and the boys cheer from the sidelines.

Yep, I'm talking powderpuff football.

And there's nothing powderpuff about it.

Girls were flying around the football field, and to paraphrase the great Andy Griffith, they were knocking each other down, and pushing on one another, and shoving on one another and I don't know what-all.

There was even an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty called ... in a powderpuff game.

One father in the stands near us allowed as to how he thought there might be more testosterone on the field Tuesday night than there is on a Friday night!

It was fun to watch the girls play, but special props go to a couple groups of guys.

Just before the start of Tuesday night's semifinal contest, I walked to the far side of the field to take pictures of the freshman team as it was getting ready for the first snap of the game.

All the fans were sitting on the homefield bleachers, except for four freshmen who ventured around the stadium to sit behind their classmates.

Dean Clark, Austin Phillips, Skyler Lauer and Aaron Platts looked downright lonely in those big empty stands. But they made up for the smallness of their contingent with four healthy sets of lungs. Those boys made some noise.

Pretty impressive, considering freshmen mostly like to sulk through their first year of high school going as unnoticed as possible in order to shed the "freshie" tag.

Not these boys. They wore their freshman-ness on their shirtsleeves. And though their classmates lost to the seniors in the opening round, they kept the faith.

The other group of folks who get kudos are the cheermen. High school boys donned pompoms and led the cheers from trackside, venturing out onto the field during halftime to build a safe little pyramid or two, much to the crowd's delight.

Six EWHS boys got into the school spirit. Led by junior coach Renee Daigle, the boys included senior Ben Haselhuhn, who donned a ... well ... curious-looking banana costume. Brandon Wade, another freshman, allowed himself to be at the top of all the pyramids, although he drew the line at being tossed in the air and caught by the other cheermen. The rest of the cheermen included Cody Pierce, Jackson Oliver, Sterling Wilder and Daquan Robinson.

For all the intensity and laughter that was being generated on the field, PA announcer and math teacher Jamie Lemmond kept the crowd entertained with a slick play-by-play that kept the audience laughing as much as the antics of the cheermen.

As the first half of the championship game between the seniors and the sophomores wound down, Lemmond was urging the seniors to hurry lest they squander a chance to score. That's not your typical PA announcer fare.

Of course, this wasn't your typical football game.