Each year, Athens seniors participate in many exciting games to celebrate their last year of high school. One activity in particular that seniors enjoy is senior assassin.
Senior Assassin is essentially a water gun war against teams of seniors. Seniors form a team of four to five people (usually made of their close friends). The different teams are formed into a bracket by a senior who volunteers to organize the tournament. The teams are put against each other to spray their opponents, and the team with the most remaining players continues to the next round. This year Katie Beth Cornell volunteered to organize the games.
“I am responsible for determining all [hits], DQs [disqualifications], final drafts of brackets, and rules. I run the group chat on Instagram so I am always doing my best to answer questions… I have to be fair and make sure that I remain non-partial,” said Katie Beth Cornell, senior.
Game competitors often have different opinions about whether or not their shots hit their opponent. Shooters are required to record a video of them squirting their opponent. This is supposed to prevent arguments among players about whether theyhit them or not.
“People argue with me all the time over rules, DQs, and [hits] that they think should/ should not count,” said Cornell. “It’s very hard trying to make sure that as many people are as happy as they can be while still keeping the game fun for everyone else.”
Athens’ game is played via Snapchat. The app can access a user’s location whenever they go on the app. For example, if a player goes to their neighborhood gym and goes on Snapchat, their location will update to being at the gym. All players must have the app installed and online.
“There used to be a rule that your live location had to be on… so it would kind of be like Life360 where people can see your location all the time no matter if you’ve gone on Snapchat or not. I think everyone didn’t really like that feature because it made it hard to sneak up on people,” said Caroline Bowen, senior.
The wide dislike of the live location caused big debates among those participating. Many liked the live locations because it made them feel safer since they could see exactly where people were at all times. Due to the debate, it was decided that each team and the team they were paired against would decide if they would like to use live location.
“My group and the team we played against decided to turn our live locations off and just have our regular snap locations on (only updating when actually on the Snapchat app) because we thought it would be more fun and sneaky,” said Bowen.
Other rules that are in place for this year’s tournament include not squirting someone while they are in the gym, clocked into work, or volunteering. Another rule that is very important for participants to follow is not squirting anyone while they are on a school campus. This rule is in place for student’s safety and to prevent confusion, as some may perceive a water gun to be a real weapon.
“I think all the rules are fair. My boss would not like it at all if someone came into my work and disrupted customers in order to get me out,” said Mia Fabian-Bayola, senior.
Many teams have already had interesting adventures and stories relating to senior assassins. Bowen’s group, “Pro Squirters” have been on several hour-long stakeouts trying to get their opponents out.
“Recently, we had all hid outside of the gym to get our opponent out. We had hidden for about an hour when he finally walked out of the door and headed towards his car. He saw us last minute and took off running before we had the chance to squirt him, unfortunately,” said Bowen.