The Maple Leaf Festival has been a tradition in Baldwin City for 57 years. Thousands of people from surrounding cities come and enjoy it. The festival has many different booths, animals and rides. People win prizes, try new foods, and it’s a chance to bring friends together.

Many of the students families come into town, such as sophomore Ashley Jackson, and it is a time for people to be able to spend time with their families and have fun.

“I’m helping chalk the booths for fundraising for my church and I’ve done it a couple years now and it’s fun,” Jackson said, “A lot of my family comes in for Maple Leaf and so we go to Maple Leaf and we go out to eat and catch up.”

Schools from surrounding areas come and walk in our parade, their bands, cheer squads, dance teams, and many clubs join in. The BHS sports teams, band, clubs, dance teams, and cheer squad walk in the parade, ride a float, or have a booth. This year, the football team rode a float, organized by the 12th Man Club. Many of the players parents are in this club, such as sophomore Garrett England.

“I think it’s a really cool experience, and it helps get the football team more involved with the community, we haven’t done it for a while,” England said. “I think the team will like it, it’s a great way to get involved. I’ve been doing this with the Baldwin youth program since about second grade, we’ve just kinda grown up around the parade.”

This year at the festival we have teams and clubs both doing booths. Our art club has a booth helping people tye dye shirts, showing them how you can make different designs, and what to do to make it look good.

“We had quite a bit of business so it was just fun learning how to tye dye shirts and working with other people, this was my first time working the booth so it was an interesting experience,” senior Alex Daniels said, “All we really did this year was offer a range of shirts for people to tye dye, and we let them try and do it and we showed them how.”

The boys soccer team had a booth this year selling walking tacos, and everyone is hoping they do it again next year.

“I thought that it was really fun working the booth and I’m excited to work it again next year.” freshman Will Evans said.

This year we had a huge turnout for the festival, the streets were crowded and filled with returning people and new people, checking out all the new booths, new rides, and new foods.