[HOCO Day 5] Pepfest pumps up fans before traditional storming of Lang Field
The victorious teams from Wednesday’s dodgeball rounds, junior team Roll Tide and senior team Ballsagna, faced off in the dodgeball finals. In a long-fought match, Roll Tide’s number of players slowly dwindled as they were struck out by Ballsagna, resulting in Ballsagna’s victory.
It wasn’t over yet. Ballsagna had to face one more opponent: the teacher’s team. Gliding around the gym in rollerskates, US Theater director Eric Severson introduced the teachers individually. The dramatic music hyping up the teachers and the fact that they were teachers didn’t stop Ballsagna from playing aggressively.
Upper School Counselor Jake Turnbloom was the last teacher on the teachers’ team. He fought for as long as he could by dodging balls launched by Ballsagna and rarely attacking. Turnbloom’s efforts caused students to cheer for his victory.
Ballsagna ended the match by forming a line and, on the count of three, all of them hurled the balls, leaving no room for Turnbloom to escape. Ballsagna secured victory over the teachers and became the overall dodgeball champion.
In the ping pong finals, sophomores Issak Senaratna and Zahir Hassan face ninth graders Winston Arvidson and Sam Worrall. Senaratna and Hassan seized the win. After their victory, Head of School Luis Ottley and Science teacher Scot Hovan strode to the ping pong table, and their contestants, Senaratna and Hassan. Senior Ezra Straub handed the mic to Hovan. “I’m so nervous,” Hovan said. That was followed by “Me too,” from Ottley. Their words brought smiles to the crowd. Shortly after, the match commenced. Senaratna and Hassan secured another win from Ottley and Hovan and won 100 house cup points for the sophomore class.
This year’s captain’s challenge featured twelve fall sports captains, two from each sport, competing to obtain a specific item and return to the circle of chairs in the center of the gym as fast as possible. SAC representatives Lilly Spurgeon and Nellie Larson held up whiteboards naming the object or person that each captain needed to find in the stands without talking to the crowd. Each round, one chair was removed from the circle, so whichever captain returned last was eliminated from the challenge. Some of the challenge items included shoes, socks, jackets, watches, and even a freshman on that captain’s team.
Boys soccer captain Arlo Zirps and girls swimming captain Sophia Bietz were eliminated early on; even so, they received cheers from their teams and high-fives from fellow captains. Meanwhile, cross country captain Taylor Barkwell and girls tennis captains Liza Rose Thomas and Georgia Ross were the final three competitors. They battled for spots on the two remaining chairs, with both tennis captains finding victory. The last round was a race between Thomas and Ross to determine the ultimate captain.
“I had never participated in the captain’s challenge before, and I was very nervous all day, but as soon as it started, the adrenaline just took over, and I locked eyes [with] all my friends and just made it happen,” Thomas said. Reflecting on her win over Ross in the final round, she said, “It definitely made my senior year hoco an even greater experience!”
Greeted by an onslaught of applauding students, four members of each grade level were ushered down onto the gym floor to participate in the annual grade-level relay race.
Consisting of four events, from sack racing to hula hooping to wheelbarrow and finally balloon head-butting, each person on every grade-level team worked together to race down and back the length of the gym.
The four teams were neck-and-neck before senior Harper Glass and junior Ezra Cunningham made a breakaway in the hula-hooping event.
Going into the final stretch of the relay, seniors Duncan Lang and Ethan Peltier led the mad dash to the finish line with their well-coordinated wheelbarrow event. The balloon event slowed all the grades down, allowing for a suspenseful pause and an increase in cheering before the seniors finished strong and took home the win, with the juniors followed by the sophomore and freshman teams close behind.
The white cape of the Crusader mascot, played by senior Adam Ebert, hung in the air for a brief second as he fell down wildly, struck by the sword of the Spartan, senior Cassandra Overholt. Seniors on one side of the gym, and juniors, sophomores, and ninth graders on the other, the crowd roared as the Spartan finally defeated the Benilde-St. Margaret Crusader.
The final event of Pepfest, the traditional mascot versus mascot skit was as spirited as ever this year. After Overholt’s Spartan victory, she led the crowd through thunderous chants of “Clap your hands, stomp your feet, let’s all do the Spartan beat.” As students and teachers shuffled out of the gym after the skit, Spartan pride was emanating from a sea of blue and gold, filled with anticipation for the homecoming carnival and boy’s soccer game.
