The Bear Facts

September 13, 2025

Good morning! I’m Tate Foertsch!

I’m Emmi Bartolo!

And I’m Kayden Graves! Welcome to the “Bear Facts”, where we’re celebrating Homecoming here at Bishop Garrigan High School.

The theme for Homecoming 2025 is “Let the Battle Begin”, and all week long our classes and our sports teams have been battling. We began the week with the big Homecoming coronation on Monday. The queen candidates this year were Sacha Alesch, Emmi Bartolo, Alyssa Haugland, and Ava Roethler, while the king candidates were Tate Foertsch, Ethan Marso, Carter Schwab, and Amaury Thomas. When the votes were all counted, the 2025 Homecoming king and queen were Tate Foertsch and Alyssa Haugland.

The royalty went on tour Monday, visiting care centers and businesses around town, as well as working with the students at Seton. Other special events for Homecoming week included a daily search for the spirit stick, a rock—paper—scissors contest on Tuesday, a food pantry challenge on Thursday, and the parade, elementary cheer clinic, and dance on Friday.

The special dress days for Homecoming week included Heroes vs. Villains, Athletes vs. Mathletes, and Blue Collar vs. White Collar. We also had the traditional Class Color Day and Black and Gold Day. This year the little kids joined into the special dress days as well, with themes like Crazy Socks and Mismatch Day.

Every year one of the biggest parts of Homecoming is the Battle of the Classes. Wednesday all four classes competed in a wide variety of games. The games included spikeball, volleyball, kan jam, ultimate frisbee, bucket ball, home run derby, kickball, pickleball, bean bag toss, and a collection of card and board games. The classes also competed in dodgeball, Gatorade chug, hot dog eating, egg toss, and tug-of-war. New this year was a McDonalds mile relay and a ball gathering competition.

All four classes ended up getting wins in some of the different events on game day. The juniors were especially proud to win dodgeball, but the seniors got revenge with their tug-of-war victories. While there were still points to earn after game day, the seniors had the overall lead. We’ll update you on the final results on next week’s show.

The Golden Bear sports teams did well during Homecoming week. The football team set the mood with a big 52 – 0 victory at Riceville last week, and then the JV Bears beat Newell—Fonda Monday night. On Tuesday the volleyball team got a big win on the road at Eagle Grove in five sets. Meanwhile in cross-country Julia Swift medaled at her third straight meet of the season.

Right now we’re in the middle of our annual Walk and Pray fundraiser at Garrigan. Students are asking for donations, which help out with the school transportation budget. You’re also welcome to submit prayer intentions, with or without a donation. The fundraising goes through next Friday, and the walk and pray event will be September 29.

With the new school year well underway, you probably know that there’s some changes in technology at all Iowa schools this year. One change is that the school switched its gradebook and attendance manager from JMC to Infinite Campus, so everyone has new log-ins to keep track of.

More important, a new state law says can’t have cell phones during the school day. At Garrigan we now leave our phones in special storage containers when we get to school in the morning and claim them again when we leave. Making up for not having cell phones, Garrigan is now providing Chromebook computers to all secondary students. We use the Chromebooks for things like research and writing papers, and of course we also have fun with them when there’s free time in class.

Eight Garrigan choir students have begun the process of preparing to audition for the all-state choir. Amaury Thomas, Shiloh Trainer, Matt Besch, Anaya Thomas, Abby Deardeuff, Riley Dooerning, Rachel Kahle, and Lucy Eisenbarth are all getting ready for all-state. Auditions will be at the end of October, and they’ll be working hard between now and then to prepare.

Our Senior Spotlight this week shines on our Homecoming king, Tate Foertsch. Here to tell you about him is Cora Deardeuff.

When Tate Foertsch was asked what activities he was in, he said “all of them”, and that’s nearly true. He’s a state champion football quarterback, he’s run at state in track, and he’s a conference champion in both baseball and basketball. Tate also keeps busy with choir, speech, drama, quiz bowl, and the “Bear Facts”. He also helps out on the school maintenance crew. Away from school he works at First Plumbing and Heating, and he likes golfing and playing videogames. Tate wants to play sports in college, where he’ll be majoring in education. Congratulations to our Homecoming king, Tate Foertsch.

Thanks, Cora! On our Golden Bear calendar today, the cross-country team is over in Holstein where they’ll be running in the CYO meet. They’ll be running again on Monday in the Emmetsburg Invitational.

Garrigan and Seton have school on Monday, even though the Algona Community Schools are off that day. We’ll have parish busing for our students. The JV football team hosts West Bend—Mallard Monday night, and there’s JV volleyball at Lake Mills.

Tuesday the volleyball team plays at North Union. Then on Wednesday instead of our usual mass, high school students will make a pilgrimage to the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend.

The school board meets on Thursday. Friday is the final turn-in day for Walk and Pray, and that night the football team plays at Ft. Dodge St. Edmond.

That’s the “Bear Facts” for Homecoming week. Thanks for joining us, and be sure to catch the show again next week for more news from Bishop Garrigan High School.