7 Homecoming Parade Rules That Surprise First-Time Visitors to a Small Indiana Town
Small-town homecoming parades have a reputation for being casual.
Brookville’s may feel that way from a lawn chair, but almost nothing about how it comes together happens by accident.
These are the homecoming parade rules that surprise first-time visitors to a small Indiana town.
1. The Parade’s Grand Marshals
Brookville’s homecoming parade doesn’t just roll down Main Street on its own.
It opens behind two named grand marshals.
Nobody elected them.
The 2025 honor went to Bob and Kathy O’Bryan, two longtime Franklin County educators recognized for decades of volunteer work with the county’s youth soccer program.
The newsletter that named them credited decades in the classroom just as much as decades coaching kids who never touched a football.
Grand marshal is an honor in Brookville, not a courtesy nod.
This year’s honorees earned the spot for what they built off the field, not for anything on it.
A first-time visitor expecting a local celebrity or a booster-club regular gets two retired schoolteachers instead.
Who Brookville’s Parade Grand Marshals Are
Brookville’s parade grand marshal, Bob O’Bryan, founded the Franklin County Soccer League for local kids in 1976, after moving from Ball State University.
The volunteer-run league has kept 200 to 300 kids playing every year for nearly five decades.
Kathy O’Bryan spent her career as the school corporation’s technology director, an office inside the same schools that run the parade.
Both O’Bryans built their reputations inside Franklin County schools years before this honor, not on a single season’s results.
That’s the kind of unpaid, decades-long work that earns the parade’s lead spot in a town this size.
2. An Hour-Early Lineup
Homecoming floats in Brookville stage nowhere near Main Street first.
Entries line up a full hour early, at 4 p.m., at St. Michael’s School, ahead of the parade’s 5 p.m. start.
A first-time visitor who arrives right at 5 has already missed the staging.
That happens a few streets over, out of sight, while Main Street still looks empty.
Nobody notices.
Anyone hoping to watch the actual lineup come together has to walk over to St. Michael’s School instead, camera or lawn chair in hand.
It takes that hour to sort every float and walking group into an order that won’t back up once the route opens.
By the time Main Street fills in, the hardest part of the whole afternoon is already finished.
3. Float Judging Categories
Brookville’s homecoming floats aren’t judged against each other as one big group.
The parade splits entries into four categories: High school class floats, high school club floats, school floats, and community floats.
Each category produces ranked winners, posted afterward in the Franklin County Homecoming Parade newsletter.
Nobody wins by accident.
In 2025, the freshman Class of 2029 float topped the class category.
Future Farmers of America (FFA) topped the club floats, and the seventh-grade football team topped the school floats.
The Whitewater Valley Retired Teachers Association topped the community float category.
The newsletter runs every result by name instead of handing out one single grand prize.
A community float competes only against other community floats, never against a school float or a class float.
A visitor watching one long line of trucks roll by has no idea four separate contests are running at once.
4. The Political-Sign Ban
Franklin County High School’s published guidelines for Brookville’s 2025 homecoming parade ruled out political organizations and campaign signs among entries.
No candidates campaign here.
That rule holds even in a town small enough that everyone already knows who’s running for what.
Franklin County High School published the rule before the parade happened, not after a sign caused a stir on Main Street.
A visitor from a town where the homecoming parade doubles as a campaign stop finds nothing to run on here.
The parade stays about the school, not about whoever’s on the ballot that fall.
5. The Route That Skips the School
The route for Brookville’s homecoming parade doesn’t end where it started.
It runs down Main Street, turns onto East Ninth Street, and finishes near the town pool, a different spot entirely from where the floats first lined up.
It ends somewhere else.
The town pool sits far enough from St. Michael’s School that this isn’t a short walk back.
A visitor who expects the parade to loop back to its starting point ends up walking in the wrong direction to catch the finish.
Anyone who parked near the starting line for a quick loop back ends up hoofing it across town instead.
6. Main Street, Also a State Highway
Brookville’s homecoming parade takes over Main Street, a road that does double duty the other 364 days of the year.
That stretch of downtown carries State Road 1 and US 52, two state and federal highways running straight through the middle of town.
Closing it isn’t a formality.
Shutting down a stretch of state highway for a parade takes more coordination than blocking off an ordinary side street ever would.
Those two routes carry drivers well beyond Franklin County, traffic that has nowhere else to go once Main Street shuts down for the afternoon.
A first-time visitor who only sees Main Street as a small-town main drag misses that part entirely.
Psst! How much do you know about homecoming’s history and Indiana high school football? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Hoosier Homecoming IQ
Answer these questions on homecoming’s history and Indiana high school football. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which university is credited with holding the first college homecoming celebration, back in 1911?
7. School Organizers, Not Town Hall
Franklin County High School's Student Council organizes Brookville's homecoming parade, not the town government.
Nobody at city hall picks the grand marshals or the float categories.
That's by design.
The whole event exists to celebrate school and community spirit, nothing more official than that.
A visitor used to a Fourth of July parade run out of a mayor's office won't find that setup in Brookville.
The school corporation owns the guest list, the theme, and the route.
City hall mostly just closes the street when asked.
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