This time last year, Vanessa Smith and Dianne Bertini, cheerleaders at Woodland Park High School nearly 20 years ago, found each other on Facebook, the social-networking Web site.The two women, both event planners living in Colorado Springs, began e-mailing regularly.“We got together, and had such a ball together, and just decided, wouldn’t it be fun to get all the people together?” Bertini said.Using the Facebook network, Smith and Bertini sent word for all Woodland Park High grads to meet at Meadow Muffins in Old Colorado City in February. The pair expected no more than 20 people to show up.Instead, they hosted 165, Smith said.The Woodland Park alumni parties — a second event with an even larger turnout was held in July — are a successful snapshot of how high school reunions are now planned. Gone are the days of relying on word-of-mouth, phone trees and Classmates.com to organize classmates’ get-togethers.Facebook’s pervasive place in modern society takes connections and re-connections people are making everyday and makes planning — and attending — reunions of all sorts easier, less mysterious, more successful and, according to Woodland Park alumni, more fun.“Facebook is free,” said Jason Roshek, a 1989 Woodland Park grad who used Facebook to organize his 20-year reunion this summer. “Ten years ago, we had to pay for all this advertising and people didn’t really want to pay.”The Facebook group for Woodland Park alumni has more than 500 members.Grads from Rampart, Palmer, Harrison, Cheyenne Mountain high schools and others in the Pikes Peak region planned their 10-year reunions in summer and fall and the classes of 2000 are in planning for 2010.“It is so much easier to find people,” said Laurie Stahle, another 1989 grad from Woodland Park High. “For our 10-year reunion I don’t think they found very many people and that’s why the turnout was low.”High turnouts at Facebook-planned reunions may also have to do with the social networking site bursting the cloud of mystery and anxiety that used to be inherently linked to the notion of seeing long-lost and far-flung friends, family members, classmates and co-workers. There’s no longer any point in worrying about awkward conversations or if people will judge what you’ve become: chances are if you’ve logged on to Facebook you’ve had some social exchange with a large number of your former classmates.“I have a problem talking face to face, except with my close friends,” Smith said. “But over the computer? Yeah it is easier.”Having organized two successful Woodland Park High alumni gatherings in 2009, Smith and Bertini plan to create an annual event.“It is just weird the re-connections you make,” Smith said. “Within 24 hours of being on Facebook, you hook up with people you never thought in a million years you’d ever see again. I’ve even re-connected with my old prom date.”

UCCS Junior Dominique McRath showed her Mountain Lion spirit during Grand Opening events of the new UCCS Event Center on Friday afternoon. Photo by CAROL LAWRENCE, THE GAZETTE