By: Morgan Epperly
© Capp Enterprises, Inc. Used by permission.
The Sadie Hawkins dance at Ardrey Kell is usually held as a Valentine’s Day dance, but that’s not how the tradition started. It began with a cartoon, oddly enough, of a girl named Sadie Hawkins.
Sadie was created by Al Capp for his cartoon, Li’l Abner, which was popular in the 1930’s. Capp made Sadie an unattractive young lady that could not get a husband. Due to her father’s stress over Sadie being alone, her dear old dad devised a plan to solve their suitor issue. They held a race in which all the eligible young men in town would participate. The rules were that the boys at the starting line got thirty seconds to run and then Sadie would run after them. Whomever Sadie happened to catch must then become her husband. All the other lonely girls in town joined in the race to find themselves a husband, too. The day of the race was named after the girl who started it all, Sadie Hawkins Day. Later in his comic, Capp included the Sadie Hawkins Dance that took place the night before the race where the girls wore boots so they could stomp on the feet of the boys to prevent them from running fast the next day.
Since this wonderful event was imagined by Al Capp, schools across the southeast started to participate in their own twist on Sadie Hawkins Day. Sadly, Ardrey Kell does not host a race that allows girls to chase after their desired husbands, but it does have the girls ask guys to the dance part. Though it is not as binding as matrimony, the Ardrey Kell girls do make their claim on their man-crushes and that works out, for better or worse.
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