Simpson Residence stormed the dance floor as a Spartan army Saturday, winning back the homecoming trophy with a second place Mock Rock finish behind first place Niedfeldt Residence.

“Having that win in the air just adds something completely different,” junior Simpson resident assistant Zachary Ponraj said. “We were up with alumni just telling stories and partying to 3 a.m. It’s just so much fun to have the win.”

Simpson, placing in four out of six competitions, finished with its second win in the past five years after an eight-year winning streak that ended in 2018. Niedfeldt Residence finished second, Off Campus Coalition in third, Kappa Kappa Gamma in fourth, and New Dorm in fifth. 

Niedfeldt established its dominance in Mock Rock with a second win in the past three years. 

“Because you don’t know who the judges are going to be and what they’re looking for, you have to integrate really good choreo, good stunts, stories, images, all that and just do everything well,” junior and head RA Harrison Layman said. “That’s what we tried to do, and in the end it paid off.”

Layman said he saw the benefit of Mock Rock in the unity of the dorm as a whole. 

“You have to trust each other,” Layman said. “It’s very rewarding to see that come to fruition that pay off, it helps us trust in the future as well.”

According to junior Paul Sri, he and senior Justin Peterson started planning stunts during the summer and finalized music and choreography in the weeks after the theme drop. 

“All the guys I was working with were so bought in to the point that my vision becoming a practical reality happened extremely easily,” Sri said. “There’s some stunts I thought would take two practices to learn and we had them done in half an hour.”

The Simpson team practiced two hours per day for two weeks, with the 14-man stunt crew putting in an extra hour of practice almost every day. 

“We work really hard to get it to crisp muscle memory,” Ponraj said. “Once we go out on the stage, there’s not a lot of hiccups, a lot of things we’re thinking about because we’ve repped it out like hundreds of times at that point.”

According to sophomore RA Jonathan Williams, Simpson wanted to win homecoming for the seniors who have been investing in the dorm community for the past four years. 

“I think ultimately what gives Simpson that edge is the love we have for each other,” Williams said. “I think a lot of the freshmen and sophomores were trying to get our juniors and seniors a homecoming win. It wasn’t ‘I want to win this for myself.’ It was ‘I want my best friends and the people that I live with to have this, too.’”