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Coming Home: Alums reflect why UC Irvine homecoming is so special
Catching up with old friends, meeting new students, experiencing the university “come alive” – these are some of the reasons why UC Irvine’s homecoming resonates with so many alumni.
“It’s just a great time,” says Michael O’Heany ’86, who won’t be wearing a crown to homecoming on March 1 – though it would be fitting. O’Heany, a board member and finance committee chair of the UC Irvine Alumni Association, was homecoming king in 1984. The former yell leader and founding member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity can’t wait for the annual festival in Aldrich Park that will be capped, as usual, with the men’s basketball evening game at the Bren Events Center. (Long Beach State is this year’s foe.)
The family-friendly celebration includes Ferris wheel rides, live music, food trucks and other eats, the coronation of the new homecoming court, fireworks and a pregame rally.
Now with some 250,000 living alumni, UC Irvine has been staging the daylong event for the last several years, with it making a big comeback after the pandemic. Back in O’Heany’s days, homecoming was eclipsed by other events – such as Celebrate UCI and Wayzgoose – since the pool of alums was relatively small to justify a big bash. No longer. Each year, attendance grows, and last year’s basketball game was a sellout.
Double-alum Khajika Soyoltulga ’16, M.P.P. ’20, a huge UC Irvine hoops fan and season ticket holder, regularly attends homecoming with her parents. “I didn’t know anyone coming to UCI,” she recalls. “But when I got here, I felt that it was a second home to me.”
“Being an Anteater is very special,” continues Soyoltulga, who works as a senior financial and policy analyst for UCI Student Affairs and serves on the UCIAA Young Alumni Council. “We’re so unique, and so is our mascot.”
Rabi Narula ’92 and his wife, Patty Le-Narula ’92, are active in several UC Irvine alumni organizations and have been volunteering each year homecoming has been held since 2018, when they became founding board members of Anteaters in Law, the official alumni chapter for lawyers who attended UC Irvine. Says Rabi Narula, “Over the last few years, different UCI schools have really started to engage with homecoming, which has made the event even more impactful.”
Patty Le-Narula notes that homecoming is a great way to connect with past and current students and their families and visit the ever-changing campus.
“Throughout the years,” she says, “homecoming has allowed us to see the university come alive, and that has been very meaningful.”
