What better way to get students to support Project Graduation than getting them to buy tickets for a friendly game of tug-of-war. Every year since most people can remember, the football team has won their way to the championship round against the office (this year it was composed of Mr. Mansfield, Mr. Robbins, Mr. Eatmon, Coach Acevedo, Mr. Shaw, Coach Gawriluk, and Mr. Adcock) but this year, the football’s winning streak has been broken. Who did this seemingly unimaginable feat? The baseball team!

The baseball team, called For Pam, defeated the football team, called Juan Ton, by an idea developed outside of school. The morning of the tug-of-war, Alec Dawson, senior, told his dad that there was a team that always won, so he suggested to drop the rope.

“I had suggested it throughout the day, but we weren’t sure we were really gonna’ do it, or even if we were gonna play the football guys,” Dawson said.

For Pam thought that they would lose if they didn’t drop the rope, so they thought they’d give it a try.

“We had said beforehand that if we were going to face a team that we thought we probably weren’t going to beat that we should just let go of the rope,” Jake Voss, senior, said, “so we had kind of planned it before, but yeah, we made the final decision right before we faced the team.”

Juan Ton was shocked, but it didn’t surprise Patrick Carreon, senior.

“I started pulling back because I knew what they were doing. In the pictures you can see me still holding on,” Carreon said.

It also didn’t appear to be an intentional drop to Mr. Robbins, Assistant Principal.

“I thought the football team pulled so hard they pulled it out of their hands,” Robbins said.

Juan Ton started pulling back with all their strength. In the end, the team was disqualified due to Michael Epley, junior, moving the flag closer to his team’s side.

“I thought it’d be only fair because they were the one that dropped the rope. When they dropped the rope, the flag passed our line for us to win, so I thought it’d be fair to us to pull it back, but it wasn’t I guess,” Epley said.

Juan Ton was supportive of Epley’s decision to pull the rope back even though they were disqualified.

“They understood,” Epley said. “They didn’t think it was illegal for me to do that because they did the same thing to us by dropping the rope, so they thought it was fine.”

For Pam wasn’t 100% on winning, however. Some members were a little concerned about dropping the rope, but it all worked out in the end.

Dawson felt “jazzed” when he found out his team had won. “We just started jumping up and down when we heard they got disqualified. We were just like ‘Oh my…’ We just showed up to have fun. We didn’t plan to win a whole lot of games,” he said.

Since the baseball team won the tug-of-war round, the rivalry between the two teams has grown.

“They don’t really like to talk about it, so I would say it has,” Voss said.

Although it was great for the members of For Pam to win, they wouldn’t have minded losing.

“It was great that we won it, but we just showed up to have fun,” Dawson said. “That just intensified how much fun it was.”