This article was written by Tegan O’Donnell who is a senior and member of Chronicle and the Journalism class.
December 6th, 2021 was a normal Monday for most of the students and staff of U-32, but for the seniors, it was the start of a snowball war: Senior Assassin.
Once the bell rang at 2:55 that Monday, the seniors had 5 minutes before the game began. Some rushed to their cars, some ran to the bus, while others started forming snowballs, ready to hit their target once the clock hit 3:00.
The previous week, U-32 senior, John Mekkelsen, had the idea to bring a TikTok trend to school. Senior Assassin is a game that seniors across the country were playing. He posted the rules of the game in the senior lounge and provided a sign-up list for people who consented to the rules and wanted to play.
Once enough people had signed up, their names were dropped into a hat for seniors to pick a name from, the name they picked became their first target.
The rules of the game:
- No headshots
- No ice balls
- The game cannot be played during school hours (from 7:45am-3:00pm) and during school events
- Inside the school is off-limits
- Once you hit your target, their target becomes your new target
- The last person standing is the winner
As soon as names were picked, seniors started planning their attacks.
Here are the perspectives of 2 students who have exciting stories about the game, each with their own unique, skillful, strategies.
The Neighbor Assassin
One senior assassin chose their neighbor and friend as their target. One day, when they knew their target wasn’t home, they drove to her house and parked their car at the end of the driveway so that she couldn’t get into the garage. When they saw the target driving up the road, the assassin left their car and waited in the woods.
She called her boyfriend over who looked through the woods for about 20 minutes, “I saw him following my footprints, but he never found me,” they said. The target stayed in her locked car until her boyfriend returned. Together, they drove through the field next to the driveway to get to the garage safely. “I was chasing them on foot up the driveway,” the assassin said, “but I wasn’t able to slide underneath the garage door before it closed.”
A few days later, the assassin was waiting for their target in the parking lot of the hockey rink, where they knew their target would show up for practice. To their surprise, their assassin was waiting for them there. “I died in the Civic Center parking lot when my assassin drove up in a stranger’s car, with tinted windows, jumped out of the back seat, opened my car door, and threw the snowball.
A student in the action of hitting their target
The Snowball Cooler Assassin
Charlie Haynes’s strategy was to be ready to assassinate his target at all times. “I had a cooler with some snowballs in my pickup,” Charlie said.
On the first day of the game, Charlie Haynes parked in the first spot of the school parking lot, ready to attack his target and teammate, Caleb Trombly, after basketball practice. A group of Charlie’s teammates walked by Charlie in his truck. “I hopped out and smoked him, and told him ‘you’re out.’”
His next target became his neighbor, Tegan O’Donnell. Charlie hadn’t come up with a plan on how to eliminate her until he was driving to school and saw her at the post office. He realized his opportunity to surprise her and eliminate his second target.
“I had the cooler snowballs, but they’d turned into chunks of ice so I couldn’t actually throw it,” Charlie said. “I hopped out and tried to tag her with it, but she was able to get back in the car before I got her, unfortunately.”
Two days later, Charlie went down to the Civic Center after school to assassinate Tegan.
“She came down for hockey,” he said, “and I ran about 100 yards across the parking lot and threw the snowball.” He had eliminated his second target.
That same night, Charlie attacked and eliminated his third target, and teammate, Jake Fair. Charlie arrived at his basketball game school early and was waiting at the doors when Jake came in.
“I stepped out the door and hit him,” Charlie said. “He was extremely upset.”
A few nights after eliminating Jake, Charlie was at Walmart with a group of friends including John. Charlie made up a story and told John that he had a new gun in his truck that he wanted John to see. Excitedly, and unsuspectingly, John walked with Charlie to the truck.
“I open the driver side door, grab my snowball, walk around, and I smoke them right in the parking lot,” Charlie said, proudly recalling the elimination of his fourth target. “I thought he was gonna have a mental breakdown right there.”
Charlie didn’t have a chance to assassinate his next target before he had been assassinated by Elvin Stowell.
Elvin made multiple attempts to eliminate Charlie. On one occasion, Elvin beat Charlie to his house and pulled a 10 ft log across the driveway to block him from getting home, in hopes that Charlie would get out of his truck to move the log, but Charlie just drove away. Another time, Elvin followed Charlie from school to work, where Charlie hid in his boss’s truck until Elvin left.
After these attempts failed, Elvin and Charlie had basketball practice which Elvin showed up early for. When Charlie arrived, all of the doors were locked except one, so he had no choice but to go to the open door where Elvin was waiting with a snowball in hand, and Charlie was assassinated.
Reporting of daily kills in the Senior’s group chat
Both seniors think the snowball assassin game impacted the senior class in a positive way.“It brought us closer together as a class,” the first senior said. Charlie recommends this game to the next senior class, saying the game “made us interact with people we wouldn’t normally interact with.”
