Kyle Smith and Tracy Leyba began dating three years ago, so it was a natural for the two Churchill seniors to go to the prom together.
As friends, Claire McManus and Jeff Chruniak have an even longer history — they’ve known each other since they were each 3 years old, and went to the prom together last Friday.
Calle Norman was set for herself — she’s been dating senior classmate James Gregory for more than a year — but she played the matchmaker and set up her friends Allison Rosenthal and Gary Smith for the prom.
All these couples were among the 600-plus students bound for Winston Churchill High School’s prom at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency on Friday, May 20. Torrential rain fell early in the day, but tapered out as evening approached. At the home of senior Bari Solomon, where more than 40 students and their parents gathered for a pre-prom photo-op, the rain was over when two limousines hauled the promgoers away at 7:30 p.m.
Churchill’s promgoers emerged from a parade of limousines at the Hyatt entrance, where they greeted Eleanor Goodwin, a Churchill English teacher, and her husband Alan Goodwin, principal of Walt Whitman High School.
By 11 p.m., the ballroom floor was jam-packed with students grooving to Outkast and Gwen Stefani, even as a few late arrivals hopped out of their limos on the street level above.
Churchill hosted its own post-prom from 1-5 a.m.
<1b>— Alex Scofield