By Darren Loo, Jan. 21, 2025
After countless hours of a joint effort from the Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Rose Float teams, Cal Poly Universities’ Rose Float, Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs, won the Leishman Public Spirit Award in the 136th annual Rose Parade for the third time.
The Leishman Public Spirit Award, previously called the Lathrop K. Leishman Trophy Award, is presented to the float with the “most outstanding floral presentation from a noncommercial participant,” according to the tournament’s website.
“This one’s really exciting because it’s basically like the best award that a self-built float can win, and we are one of six self-built floats in the parade,” said Brooke Handschin, the Cal Poly Rose Float Pomona team president.
The theme for this year’s Rose Parade was “Best Day Ever,” and according to Ed Morales, this year’s Tournament of Roses president, “Best Day Ever” celebrates life’s best moments.
Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs featured Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Cal Poly’s Rose Float team president Colin Marfia said Nessie is typically a shy creature. To go with the “Best Day Ever” theme, Cal Poly Rose Float’s story behind the float was that Nessie came up to the surface for the first time, meeting a host of new friends with whom they celebrated their newly found friendship at a lake day party. That would be Nessie’s best day ever.
Designing a float like Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs is a year-long process. CPP’s design chair, Amelia Atwell, said starting early in the year, the team starts planning and thinking of ideas for the float. By mid-April, the design team will start finalizing ideas. Soon after, the construction and decorations teams work together to decide on the final elements to include on the float.
In July, construction starts on both campuses, and both portions of the float join in October. From then on, Cal Poly’s team drives to Pomona every weekend to work on the float until the end of December, when the float moves to Pasadena and decoration starts — this is where the float comes to life.
All the visible decorations that go on the float are required to be natural materials, whether it’s dry materials like coffee grounds, wet materials like fruit slices or fresh materials like flowers.
According to Marfia, on Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs, some of the materials used include blue and purple irises as well as purple statice for the water, roses and carnations as non-floralmaterials such as split peas and green lentils were used to add color to Nessie’s body. Pampas grass and black moss were used to add color to the two dogs.
With 75 years under its belt, Cal Poly Rose Float continually strives to be innovative. This year, the Rose Float team was able to figure out how to place fresh carnations onto neoprene, a flexible synthetic rubber material usually found in wetsuits, to make Nessie’s moving tail.
“This year, we were able to put fresh carnations into the neoprene, which is something that has never been done before,” said CPP’s decoration chair Anna Wu.
Wu said the team had to cut holes in the neoprene that were small enough to not rip the neoprene but big enough for the carnations to fit through, then they had to glue the carnations in place with a special adhesive so the carnations would not fall off. However, many were impressed with the technique they used to attach fresh flowers to a moving part.
“Every single one of the three judges stopped and looked at the tail,” said Atwell, who walked the judges around the float. “They were like, ‘Wow, how did they do this?’ So that was a really lovely moment.”
Although it’s a long process, building the float from start to finish is a rewarding process. Going to the parade as a whole team and seeing the float turn the corner on Colorado Boulevard floods everyone with emotion, the chairs said.
“Getting to see everyone put their heart and soul, sometimes literal blood, sweat and tears into this project, and to see it all come together, it’s awesome,” said Marfia.
Feature image courtesy of Darren Loo
