A Celebration of Community, Togetherness, and Autumn Fun: HRA Fall Festival to Mark 43rd Anniversary

This autumn, Hampton Roads Academy will continue one of its most beloved campus traditions as the Navigator community celebrates the 43rd anniversary of Fall Festival.

Scheduled for Friday, October 16, from 2:00 to 5:30 pm, the much-anticipated event will bring students and faculty from all three divisions together with parents, alumni, extended families, and friends for an afternoon of carnival games, exciting contests, delicious treats, and fall fun for all ages.

Highlights will include a petting zoo, a haunted house, a rock climbing wall, a crazy train ride, a cake walk, raffles for gift baskets generously donated by Navigator parents, a pickleball tournament held on the HRA tennis courts, and so much more—all executed on an unprecedented scale.

The festivities would not be possible without a dedicated and growing team of parent volunteers focused on creating an unforgettable experience for every student and a sense of belonging for every family.

Leading the Fall Festival Planning Committee is a trio of HRA moms who serve on the Academy’s Parents Council. Eleventh-grade representative Julie Patterson and tenth-grade representative Sonja Seutter are Fall Festival veterans, having volunteered and taken on greater leadership roles since their children joined HRA eight and ten years ago, respectively. They are joined by Parents Council Pre-Kindergarten and Lower School division representative Gema McGuiness, who is new to HRA and views her first Fall Festival as an opportunity for her family and others to connect with fellow members of the Navigator community and meaningfully contribute to the life of the school.

“I raised my hand because I did not want to spend the year on the sidelines hoping the community would find us,” McGuiness said. “I wanted our family to be part of building the welcome, not just receiving it.”

HRA invites every Navigator family to join our parent volunteers in building the welcome at this year’s Fall Festival. “It’s simply the best,” Seutter said—“the excitement, the divisions coming together, seeing new and old faces in the community, and creating a lifetime of memories for HRA students.”

A Storied Tradition

The Fall Festival that the HRA community knows and loves today is the product of a transformation that has spanned more than half a century.

In 1969, when the Academy still served only students in Grades 7 through 12, a devoted group of parents formed the Parents and Friends Committee, a body dedicated to bringing Navigator families together and raising funds to elevate the HRA experience. An annual Spring Festival soon became one of the committee’s signature events.

By 1980, the organization grew into the Parents’ Association, which made the decision to move the yearly festival from spring to autumn in 1983. The inaugural Fall Festival set an ambitious goal: to raise $25,000 for a computer lab at HRA. The event was a resounding success, helping the Academy fully equip the lab the following December, and it would not have been possible without the 144 parents—a group more than a third the size of the entire student body at the time—who stepped up to do their part.

Every fall since then, the remarkable efforts of parent volunteers eager to support HRA have carried on a cherished tradition, strengthened the school community, and helped unlock opportunities for generations of students.

The newly formed HRA Parents Council, an evolution of the former Parents’ Association, will continue this legacy as it hosts its first Fall Festival this October. With a parent representative for each grade level, from Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12, the Parents Council works in close collaboration with school leaders to align their volunteer efforts with the needs and objectives of the Academy and provide a touchpoint for all Navigator families to support the school and come together for special events throughout the year. Whatever an HRA parent’s background or schedule may be, the Parents Council provides opportunities to connect with a community of adults who share a commitment to providing an exceptional education for their children.

According to Patterson, the Parents Council’s leadership of the Fall Festival Planning Committee “has increased how many parents contribute to the event’s success, giving more parents a sense of accomplishment and pride in Fall Fest and the fun students have at it.”

McGuiness agreed, suggesting that the planning process marked a promising start for the Parents Council’s role in family engagement throughout the school year, fostering “a culture that welcomes parents as partners.”

“Expanding the Footprint”

As the tradition of Fall Festival enters a new chapter, it will evolve in two principal ways.

First, in a departure from prior years, when the event fell on the same date as the Homecoming game, this year’s Fall Festival will be held the previous Friday. This change will extend an annual autumn celebration of the Navigator community into an even more expansive season of festivities, with the fun beginning at Fall Festival, continuing through Spirit Week, reaching new heights as alumni join current families on campus for Homecoming on October 23 and 24, and culminating with parents, grandparents, graduates, faculty, staff, and friends of the Academy gathering to support Navigator Athletics at the 34th Annual HRA Golf Classic on October 29.

The new date will also facilitate a second change. No longer sharing the campus with Homecoming events on a single afternoon, Seutter explained that she and her fellow volunteers will have more space available for “expanding the footprint” of Fall Festival.

As a result, the Planning Committee has laid out a more ambitious vision for this year’s event. The festival will feature a larger haunted house, more food choices, a wider array of activities tailored to the interests of older students, and an expanded petting zoo, featuring not only the familiar sheep, goats, llamas, and pigs, but also snakes, bunnies, chickens, and more. In partnership with Amazing Entertainment, the committee will also introduce new bounce houses, rides, and interactive entertainment options.

For her part, Patterson cannot wait to see the students’ “excitement when they race out of school at the start of the event.”

Assisting HRA parents as the festival kicks off, all Upper School students will volunteer—either individually or as members of clubs that will be fundraising at the event—painting the faces of their fellow Navigators, facilitating crafts and carnival games, and serving up snow cones, popcorn, cotton candy, and other craveable snacks. Middle Schoolers will have the opportunity to help out as well, both on their own and as members of participating clubs.

With so many fun ways for students and parents across all three divisions to get involved and connect with fellow Navigators, this year’s Fall Festival will be a celebration no member of the HRA community will want to miss.

“I want people to arrive, run into someone they know, meet someone they don’t, and leave later than they planned,” McGuiness said. “I am looking forward to faces becoming names, to seeing students from every division in one place, and to helping host the kind of event that makes a new family say, ‘This is home.’”

There are still plenty of opportunities to volunteer for Fall Festival. Sign up to help carry on this wonderful HRA tradition!