There is always a distinct awkwardness that fills the air around homecoming season. Who will ask who and how will I ask become priorities in student’s lives.

Four New Trier seniors wanted to solve a problem they found with dances: finding a date.

It is a fat chance that a student’s date from homecoming will be the love their life, but finding someone to go with can be stressful.

Enter Dancematch. An appropriately named site that finds students a date for school dances.

How it works is simple. After signing up for the site, a user selects the top fifteen people they would want to go to a dance with from a list of other registered users. Then, on a set date, the website uses an algorithm to match students up for a dance.

All matches are mutual, though. If no one on a user’s list puts them on their respective list, then the user will not be matched up with anyone. In order to combat this, Dancematch starts a second round of matching.

The second round is identical to the first round, except the lists reset and users can only select other users who were not chosen in the first round.

The most fascinating part of Dancematch is not that it attempts solve a problem some students face, but that four New Trier seniors joined together to create the site.

Seniors Dylan Cable, Andy Feis, Danny Hines and Noah Quinn brought this idea to life. In February of 2012, Feis thought of the idea explaining “the main goal was to match people where both parties are happy about it.”

Originally, the site would ease dance preparations by aiding the limousine leasing, restaurant reserving and boutonniere buying. For homecoming though, the site will simply test out the matching process.

The creators even pitched the idea to the administration as a way to simply buy tickets and such, but due to possible liabilities, any connection with the school ceased.

Later on, Feis brought Cable and Hines on board, and only just recently added Quinn to the team. Each member brought certain skills to the table. Cable took the responsibility of building the physical site, and coded it manually. Cable even worked with a German computer hacker to make sure there would not be any issues with either traffic or security of sensitive information.

Feis and Hines helped Cable with design while also thinking of new ideas. When Quinn was recruited, both he and Hines focused their efforts on marketing the site to the student body.

For the concept of Dancematch to work though, a large number of students need to sign up for the site.

Quinn said, “There are a lot of people in our school that want to use Dancematch, and we think it would be useful to a lot of people who are anxious about asking someone to a school dance.”

Cable then added that “one of our main challenges is that we really need a lot of people to use the website for it to be truly useful.” To get enough people to use it, there needs to be trust with the site and positive experiences for early adopters.  Cable, who is aware of this said, “we are going to try a bunch of variations of the product so that we can learn what works and what doesn’t work.”

Even with a high number of users, not everyone who goes on the site will be matched. Getting everyone matched is not the goal of the site.

“The way we see it is that every person we can help find a date is a success to Dancematch overall,” said Quinn.

Not being matched after two rounds is one of the biggest problems other students have found with the site. Hines shot down any concern as “it’s okay because it’s completely confidential: nobody knows who you put on your list, who you’re matched up with, or if you were even matched at all.” This way, the site does not add any additional social anxiety to the dance process.

One senior, who wishes to remain anonymous, claimed that although the site has potential to work, the problem lies with the fact that it might not get any users.

“Nobody wants to be the one to start using it. It won’t work because dancematch requires a sheer mass of students to use it,” said the student.

Hines is aware of this issue stating, “The biggest problem isn’t that it’s impractical, it’s just that it’s hard for kids to commit to something that they’re not quite used to.”

Even though many students are skeptical, 300 kids signed up the first day. Marketing has also been a strong area for the site. Dancematch business cards have been found throughout the school and some kids are even wearing Dancematch t-shirts.

Senior Will Sheppard is one of the students found wearing the shirt. He wore the shirt to advertise a site he found useful. “It would certainly make less drama for people who tend towards drama. And for people who wouldn’t feel comfortable asking anyone otherwise, I’d say it’s quite practical for them,” said Sheppard.

Without Dancematch, students would have to endure the experience of finding and asking a date face to face. Among students, the personal value of using the site is still up for debate, but for some, the chances of getting that dream date is closer through the site.

Students can sign up to use the Dancematch at Thedancematch.com. Registration is currently open and students can add names to their list before the September 24th submission deadline.