originally posted September 21; updated Oct. 27, 2024

Let’s start by acknowledging that the homecoming mums we’re talking about are in a fundamentally different category than their human-sized counterparts.

What makes these mums special is that they have a calling to instill pride. Like the homecoming parade floats of generations past, these mums bring people together as a team to create them, and they bring their community together in celebration of school spirit.

Students and teachers who have been involved in building a team mum together have used these words to describe the experience:

“Bonding.”
“Collaborate.”
“We learned so much.”
“So proud.”
“It was so worth it.”
“We smashed it.”
“It brought tears to my eyes when it went up.”

So instead of calling this category of homecoming mums ginormously humungous megamums, or whatever, let’s all now and forever more call them by their rightful name.

These mums are Team Mums.

Because for the teachers, students, parents, schools, and community members who get involved in creating or supporting a Team Mum, the experience of the journey is at least as important as the destination.

2024 Team Mum Watch

Can you help me find all the Team Mums being built in 2024? Let me know in the comments, DM at @txhocomum, or email me at mumentousbook@gmail.com. Here are the Team Mums that people have helped me find so far:

LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM:
Dawson High School, Electra ISD, Princeton ISD (PHS and Lovelady),
Bonham High School, Tatum Primary School, White Oak ISD,
Caddo Mills High School (mum #1), Caddo Mills High School (mum #2), Allen High School,
Royce City High School, Economedes High School, Moe & Gene Johnson High School,
East View High School, Lockhart High School, Packsaddle Elementary School (2 mums),
Pearland High School, Braswell High School, Alvin High School,
Winston Churchill High School, Community ISD, Cypress Ranch High School,
Robinson High School, Muleshoe High School, Decatur High School,
Jordan High School, Lampasas High School, Taylor High School,
Sinton High School, Plano Senior High School, Champion High School,
El Campo High School, Waxahachie High School, Flour Bluff High School,
Levelland High School, New Caney High School, Southwest High School in San Antonio,
Sam Rayburn High School, Brandeis High School (mum #1), Brandeis High School (mum #2),
Hays High School, Keller Central High School, Detroit High School,
Whitehouse High School, Palestine High School, Lake View High School,
Sonora ISD, Crockett High School, Birdville ISD,
Cypress Woods High School

Rumor has it that Frankston and Cuevo high schools also built team mums in 2024, but I can’t find photographic evidence. Can you help? DM me on Facebook or email me at mumentousbook@gmail.com.

Find more information about each of these team mum projects in the Mumentous Team Mum photo album on Facebook.

Are Team Mums a new thing?

No, not at all. Dawson High School says students at their school have been building team mums for years. East View High School is claiming to have built a world-recording breaking mum.

I suspect team mums go back much further than we might think. In 2015, Palo Duro High School called their 15’ tall team mum the “world’s largest,” suggesting there might have been other larger-than-life mums that were suffering by comparison. In fact, if we hop in a time machine and travel back to the 1990s, we’ll find that Trinity High School hung the same team mum every year at homecoming for at least a decade.

to learn the history of team mums, click here.

The World’s Largest Mum

Most team mums aren’t built to break records. But sometimes they try, and in 2023, one team mum did it.

On February 20, 2024, Guinness World Records announced that Lewisville High School was the new record holder for building the largest homecoming mum. Led by their teacher Abby Winston in Fall 2023, a group of LHS fashion design students created a mum measuring 37.5 feet long. Wow! In terms of total square feet, the LHS mum was almost two and a half times larger than the previous record set by Arlington ISD. Wow again!

Click here to learn more about Lewisville High School’s record-breaking mum, and click here to learn more about Arlington ISD’s 22 ft. mum, which was the first to earn Guinness’ largest homecoming mum title.

Team Mums for promotional purposes

Schools aren’t the only organizations trying their hands at team mum-building. Others have been created throughout the years by individuals, businesses, and even cultural groups looking to join the fun during homecoming season. Here are a few of my favorites, including the 2019 What-a-Mum that (in my humble opinion) started the recent wave of team mum-building… and that I had a little more than a little something to do with.

18 ft. What-a-Mum by Whataburger at the Arlington Museum of Art (2019); 78 ft. Texas mum by Oh My Goodness Boutique (2021); approx. 17 ft. Dallas Christian School mum by The Saleplace (2023); 11 ft. Walmart Port Lavaca Texas mum by Missy’s Homecoming Mums (2024); 20-ish ft. Saleplace mum at The Saleplace (2024); MUMENTOUS mum* by Visit Garland/Garland Heritage Crossing (2024).

Could there be other schools or organizations, in Texas and beyond, that have created team mums? Most likely. Can you help me find them? Let me know in the comments below, DM at @txhocomum on Facebook or Instagram, or email me at mumentousbook@gmail.com.

Shameless Plug for Mumentous

If you enjoyed reading this, I think you’ll enjoy my book, Mumentous: Original Photos and Mostly-True Stories about Football, Glue Guns, Moms, and a Supersized High School Tradition that was Born Deep in the Heart of Texas.

You don’t have to take it from me. Here’s what Kirkus said about MUMENTOUS:

“...Schultz sets out to explore—through stories and photographs—the culture of mums: how the tradition originated, how it has changed over the years, and what it means for the schools, students, parents, and communities who participate. It’s a tale rooted in a particularly Texan love of maximalism but one that also tells a larger story of the human need for ritual and pageantry...

The many eye-catching black-and-white photographs are as instrumental as the text in communicating the soul of mum culture. Both seasoned Texas alumni and readers completely unfamiliar with the tradition will be equally charmed by this beguiling quirk of Americana. An entertaining, brilliantly shot look at a Texas high school tradition."

— Kirkus Reviews & Kirkus Magazine