FALLBROOK - Educators hope to give homecoming some historical perspective this week, as they prepare to screen a series of 54-year-old film clips of the high school's 1953 championship football team.

At 3 p.m. Wednesday, the school will show a 15-minute video in a free presentation that will be open to the public in the Bob Burton Center for the Performing Arts on campus.

Tim Oder, a teacher at Fallbrook High School for 28 years, said that the original clips were shot using 16-millimeter film and stored in a small school library room for decades until he found them.

Last year, Oder had the clips retouched and converted to DVD, and plans to show students and local residents what high school football and high school culture were like 54 years ago.

"It's not really long, it's very crudely done - probably by high school students splicing the film together," Oder said. "But I think there's a lot of neat stuff in there."

He said the movie does not have any sound and is about 15 minutes long, but said it provides nice historical perspective from the time when Fallbrook High was located off Ivy Street in downtown Fallbrook.

"We decided to make it a gift to the Fallbrook Historical Society from the school, so they can have it in their archives, to show people," he said of the movie.

Josh Way, who worked with Oder to get the clips converted to digital format, said he is looking forward to seeing how students react to the old footage.

"It's going to be right after school, so I'm going to try to get as many kids in there as possible to see it," Way said, adding that this year's homecoming activities - including the film screening and a field dedication scheduled for Friday night - seem to have more substance.

"There's a lot going on this week - it's bigger than most years," he said. "I think there's a lot of spirit, a lot of pride this year. We're kind of getting more people involved, instead of the same old stuff."

As the school prepares to reflect on mid-century Fallbrook traditions, another tradition - that of building floats on cars and driving them down the track before the homecoming game - will have to adapt, Way said.

That's because next year the track will be surfaced with a rubberized material that will be much better for the school's athletics programs, but too expensive to risk wear and tear from vehicles.

Way said he is already consulting with other staff members at the school to figure out how the over-the-top floats that each class builds do not suffer from the lack of cars.

"We're already drawing up plans and trying new things," he said.

The Warriors' homecoming game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, when the team will host the Rancho Bernardo Broncos.

The varsity football field was retrofitted recently with artificial turf, and even though the team has already played on the new surface, school officials will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony before Friday's game.

Other activities during the week include daily, themed student competitions during lunch and the homecoming dance on Saturday.

- Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.