UAB Homecoming Week: traditions, free comedy show, Halloween blood drive

“Unleash the Dragon” is the theme for this year’s Homecoming Week, as the Blazers celebrate with fun events leading up to the UAB football game Nov. 2.
homecoming parade The University of Alabama at Birmingham will celebrate Homecoming 2013 with a week of spirited events, culminating at noon Saturday, Nov. 2, with the UAB Blazers vs. Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders football game at Legion Field.

Homecoming Week 2013, themed “Unleash the Dragon,” will begin with Paint the Town on Sunday, Oct. 27, when students paint community and campus windows with messages. On game day, Blazer Village will open at 9 a.m., with shuttles running from Blazer and Camp halls to Legion Field free for all UAB students and fans. The winners of the Mr. and Ms. UAB scholarship competition, sponsored by the UAB National Alumni Society, will be announced during halftime.

Students and the community are invited to the Homecoming Comedy Show, this year featuring Jessimae Peluso and Donnell Rawlings, from the MTV reality comedy shows “Girl Code” and “Guy Code.” The free show will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29, in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, 1200 10th Ave. South. Call 205-975-2787 or visit www.AlysStephens.org.

A full schedule of all UAB Homecoming 2013 events is online at www.uab.edu/students; alumni can see National Alumni Society activities at www.uab.edu/alumni. Students can tweet about Homecoming activities using #beware.

Other UAB Homecoming Week highlights include student events such as Blazer Hustle, Pancakes and Karaoke, the Fall Festival, Stompdown, and Blaze the Night, as well as the ultimate Blazer tradition, the Gurney Derby, which will take place at noon Wednesday, Oct. 30. In the Gurney Derby, teams of four students each will race decorated hospital gurneys nearly the length of 13th Street South between 10th Avenue and University Boulevard, and back again. Prizes are awarded for first and second place, Best Dressed Gurney, Most Creative Passenger, and Dead Last.

A full schedule of all UAB Homecoming 2013 events is online at www.uab.edu/students; alumni can see National Alumni Society activities at www.uab.edu/alumni. Tweet about Homecoming activities using #beware.

A Halloween blood drive is scheduled for 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 31, in the Blazer Hall Residence Life Center, 920 16th St. South. The annual Homecoming Parade is set for noon Friday, Nov. 1. The parade route will start at 14th Street South, then travel down 10th Avenue South to 20th Street South, where it will return along University Boulevard. There is no rain date for this year’s parade.