1. Targets Acquired

8:22 a.m., Feb. 27: Missed call from Izzy Xu.

8:28 a.m.: Missed call from Thomas Jewett.

8:28 a.m.: Kelly Poon answers a call from Jewett.

8:29 a.m.: Poon calls Xu.

“I was like: Oh my God, I know what just happened,” Poon said.

Xu and Jewett bore news of one of the first Senior Assassin eliminations. Jewett had camped out in front of Xu’s house for half an hour and was ready with a Nerf dart when she came outside.

As the 12th grade representative, Poon organized the inaugural Senior Assassin, and it has infused some extra energy and competitive spirit into the class of 2024 since the return from February break.

“I thought it would just be a fun way to bring the grade together,” Poon said. “Something fun to do as second semester seniors.”

She took inspiration from other high schools where Senior Assassin is already a tradition for the graduating class to bond over. In an effort to make the most of the grade’s senior experience, Poon planned the activity at this point in the second semester because most special senior events, like beach or ditch day, are concentrated towards the end of the year. 

Seventy-seven seniors signed up to play and formed 33 teams of two to three people. At the outset, on Feb. 26, each participant received a small Nerf blaster along with a fairy wand, which they must hold in order to shield themselves from any blast attempts. 

Poon decided on the wand after finding one in her closet that was part of a Halloween costume from two years ago.

Teams were randomly assigned another duo or trio to target, and if they eliminated two players would acquire that team’s target. Once 40 players remained—a threshold reached on March 15— they had to wear tiaras to stay safe in addition to clutching their fairy wands. Since almost everyone had figured out who was after them by that point, Poon also switched around the targets on March 24 in order to accelerate the game. 

Even before it entered full swing, she anticipated grade-wide culture-building around the game. Her goal was to start a tradition, not only create an entertaining one-off for her class. 

“I’m excited to see people bond with their teammates and create excitement about [the game], so that the next year’s seniors will be excited to play,” she said.

Poon has made story posts for each elimination on the @nuevastuco Instagram account to build interest among the broader community. The publicity delivers the action and entertainment to anyone who checks the posts, even if the seniors are the only participants.

The live experience of watching the game unfold, meanwhile, has been exciting for Grade 12 dean Morgan Snyder, who supported Poon in the planning process.

“What’s been fun for me is seeing students who normally don’t interact connect with each other over this and seeing people get really competitive,” she said.

To help set intentions for the game, Snyder and Dean of Students Jackee Bruno workshopped the rules extensively with Poon. While maintaining the spirit of the competition, they wanted to deemphasize gun culture and prevent inconveniences for the broader school community. 

“I’m not going to lie, there’ve been some lines crossed and rules broken, but that often is part of playing a game,” Snyder said. 

Overall though, she believes Poon has done well to address any incidents and keep on-campus Senior Assassin “school friendly and upholding of community norms.”

At school, seniors must only aim for each other, and they cannot modify their Nerf blasters or use any other type than the hand-sized one Poon distributed. The latter policy was put into effect because on the first day a number of students brought much larger blasters (one to two feet long, Poon estimated) or spray-painted theirs black.

“My biggest concern is the blasters being disruptive, or teachers getting anxious or concerned about it,” Poon said. 

Class, clubs, athletics, and other meetings are therefore off limits. That said, seniors have had to stay alert during breaks in the school day if they want to avoid elimination, or, on the flip side, capitalize on an opportunity to blast a player. 

Given the restrictions on campus, plenty of thrilling Senior Assassin action has happened outside school grounds.

2. Game Highlights

Spotlight I: 

Logan and Syon → Cullen and Sava → Anya, Averi, and Samara → Brynn and Grant

One of the most cold-blooded eliminations took place when Syon Patel went for a hike with Sava Iliev and Cullen Dearing one afternoon, and went over to Iliev’s house for dinner afterward. Dearing, luckily for him, did not have the time to join his teammate.

“I gained his trust,” Patel said. He even went as far as to discuss Senior Assassin while eating with Iliev and his mom, who cooked for them.

The two then went up to Iliev’s room. Patel hadn’t brought his own Nerf blaster, but now he had a way to get his target out. “I found his Nerf guns and I shot him with his own Nerf gun,” he said.

Before his elimination, Iliev recorded a highlight of his own, a “devious assassination” of Averi Marlin while driving her down Highway 101. 

Marlin’s teammates Samara Bainton and Anya Motwani, meanwhile, remained in the game throughout March. They were stuck on offense, though, from the start of the game until receiving new targets. They were not able to get past the duo of Brynn Stuart and 2023 Blammo champion Grant Brewster, but it was certainly not for a lack of trying. (Blammo is a similar game, but played like standard tag instead of with Nerf blasters, and with spoons for defense in place of wands.)

“[Stuart and Brewster] didn’t know we had them, and then it became public information and now it’s been completely impossible,” Bainton said, the week before targets changed. 

To try and prevail against the odds, Bainton hid under a blanket in the trunk of Sam Pasternak’s car, and lay waiting for Stuart to come in. Stuart, along with Julia Tilson, did get into the car, but somehow thought to ask if there was someone hiding. Tilson, worried someone was trying to blast her, went and checked, and found Bainton when she lifted up the blanket. Tilson tried to play it off by keeping quiet, but Stuart was rightfully suspicious and turned around and saw Bainton.

“Sam and I orchestrated a whole plan, I was really proud of it, and came away with nothing,” Bainton said, noting that lying in the trunk was not comfortable either.

No assassination attempts against Stuart and Brewster had succeeded as of April 1. Switching targets was indeed a stroke of good fortune for Bainton’s team. 

Spotlight II: 

Jordan, Julia, and Carina → Navon and Sam Z. → Charlie and Bodie

The team of Jordan Dickson, Tilson, and Carina Totty tallied four total eliminations before falling out of the game the week the tiaras came into play. They went to remarkably great lengths to surprise a couple of those targets, and they had success to show for it.

The first was Navon Soussan, whom Dickson easily eliminated within the first couple days.

“He announced to everyone on the couches that he lost his wand and so I got him out,” she said. 

To follow that up, Jordan Dickson drove all the way down from San Mateo to Atherton in order to ambush Sam Zukin before school one morning.

Zukin had left his wand in his car, not thinking Senior Assassin would be a concern while he was home. Dickson, however, waited over an hour at his house. When Zukin finally walked out of his garage, she missed her first blast attempt. A chase into the garage ensued, and Dickson triumphed on her second try, all much to the confusion of Zukin’s parents, who were getting ready to leave for work.

Dickson and her team continued on to a new pair of targets after the successful stakeout. 

Bodie Currier invited Tilson into his house, where she returned the welcome with a nerf dart, leaving Currier’s volleyball teammate Charlie Berk to keep their team alive. Knocking him out would be a highly involved operation for Tilson and company.

They showed up to a Tulane University accepted students event Berk was attending, but he was holding his wand the entire time. The attempt—captured on video and posted to Instagram—went awry and only bewildered everyone else in the program.

Still, Tilson, Totty, and Dickson stayed undeterred. Berk left school victorious from a volleyball game one evening and headed over to his girlfriend Ciara Davis’ house. Not taking any chances, he carried his wand with him, but relented when Davis told him to put it down. Davis picked it up and did not give it back when Berk asked.

“At that point I was like: Oh, it’s over,” Berk said.

Unfortunately for him, this was part of a plan Totty had devised with Davis beforehand. Moments later, on Davis’ cue—saying “I’m so excited for Bonaire”—Dickson jumped out of a closet and blasted Berk. 

“I’m sorry Charlie,” Dickson said after the fact.

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The tiara requirement and new targets were instituted have prompted the number of remaining players to dwindle rapidly. Those still standing are the most invested, but with just 12 players on nine teams left as of April 1, the competition’s conclusion is in short order and will likely arrive before spring break. 

Soon enough, the winners of Senior Assassin from the class of 2024 will be crowned and get to revel in the glory in the weeks to come.