Senior Assassin is a “yearly” tradition that has taken the Holy Family senior class by storm this year.  I put the word yearly in quotation marks because this is only the second year of the competition and at this rate who knows if it will continue next year.

The rules of the game are summed up like this: You and your partner attempt to eliminate enemy teams using a water gun during the course of a week. Safety items, such as goggles and water wings, make a target safe at all times except for purge days. These days make the water wing/goggles useless, you are not safe on these days.

This year’s installment features 50 teams, each putting in 10 dollars, equaling a $510 prize fund.  50×10 does not equal 500, however, there are two teams of three due to scheduling conflicts throughout the competition.

Before the competition started, things were off to a less-than-ideal start.  Upon seeking the approval of the administration, I was told that the school parking lot would be completely off-limits in light of the Denver East school shooting. It also did not help that last year’s senior class was so wild and aggressive with the attempted eliminations of other teams while on school grounds, that the school would rather not be involved.

The first week was slow as expected, there was a handful of eliminations, and only one team was completely eliminated.  There was a much more dramatic increase in results. This could be attributed to increased familiarity with the competition or perhaps people trying harder. As the person running the competition, I am just glad that things are speeding up because the worst-case scenario is the competition dragging all the way to graduation.

Kristi Torczynski described the completion as “A game of skill, stealth, and determination for a prize that you can earn by working for in three days.”