Wootball, formerly known as Powerpuff, is an event hosted by the SGA in which students can participate in a flag football game divided by grade level. This game allows for non-football players to live out their Friday night lights dreams. Students from each grade sign up, get placed into teams, assign “coaches,” who are football players, and then meet with their teams and coaches once or twice for practice. There are three games played, one between underclassmen, one between upperclassmen and one between the winner of both previous games.
Wootball has always taken place in November, right after the end of the football season. With SGA posting announcements about it and holding an informational meeting in October, it was intended to take place in November just like the years prior. Students were just beginning to get excited when SGA suddenly announced that Wootball was being canceled from its current dates and being moved to the spring. Information was not communicated as to why this was happening and students had to accept it and wait for spring. “Right when I found out that Wootball was moved to the spring, I got upset because I was excited about it. But now it’s fine since I know that I have something to look forward to,” junior Ebba Liese said.
With the new administration this year, Principal Douglas Nelson has expressed his wish that more administrators get on board with an event before it is put on. With the additional challenges of getting approved for events in the first place, there were already delays with planning. On top of that, football had made it to the playoffs and field availability became a bigger uncertainty. “The fact that football made the playoffs left a lot of unknowns and would’ve been a risk up until the Saturday after their game,” SGA coordinator Amy Buckingham said.
The other problem was with chaperone availability. School-sponsored events held on school grounds or in the building have to have teacher or staff chaperones, and there was a lack of volunteers willing to stand in the cold, watching high school students play flag football.
The biggest issue was field availability. Between fall and winter sports as well as pep rallies, there were few times in which the field was available for the coaches to hold their practices and later, the game. “There is not a current set date for the event and we need to find a date that is possible for all parties that are required to be at the game. We also need to figure out when the field is available between team practices and sporting events,” Buckingham said.
In the meantime, SGA has had to push back planning for Wootball and started working on other events. But, when spring comes, Wootball will have the same components and follow the same rules. “I still think that Wootball is going to be a great event, we just wanted it to be in the fall since that’s around football season. Besides that, the game will work the exact same just at a different time of the year,” junior and SGA secretary Ashi Stanislaus said.
