Inside your garage, on the hood of your car, in a random parking lot, wherever you go, someone is following you. While this is a nightmare scenario for most, it’s the reality of Homestead High School seniors this spring. Students and their water guns are on the hunt for their targets, while also being aware of their assassin. Their only saving grace? A floaty or goggles.
What exactly is senior assassin? The objective of the game is to be the last team standing. Teams of two are assigned their targets at the beginning of the week and are made aware of who their assassins are as well. Their goal is to shoot their targets by the end of the week, with video evidence, before their assassins can reach them. To get your target out, you must shoot them with a water gun. Players are safe if they are wearing goggles or a floaty, but after they are hit once with them on, it’s fair game, floaty or not.
Safe zones include school grounds during school hours, inside players’ homes (unless they have given their consent), at a practice, during an appointment, or when on the clock. Every participant must enable their location on Snapchat so their targets can be aware of their whereabouts.
And if you turn off your location or break a rule? You have a target on your back: a bounty. If a player is given a bounty, any participant can attempt to shoot them for 24 hours for a chance to move on to the next round. The prize at the end is around $800, making these teenagers ruthless.
Someone has to be the manager of all this chaos, and senior Amml Khan took on the challenge.
“Ava Nelson and I were in class one day and were wondering when senior assassin was starting. And I like to plan; I don’t mind it, and I’m relatively good at it, so I was like, ‘I’ll just start it.’ And I did. It was pretty spontaneous, actually.”
However, there are many challenges to running this high-stakes game. Khan claims, “The hardest part about running it is managing everybody and trying to make everyone happy, yet trying to be fair to everyone else. I don’t think it’s worth the money, honestly. I don’t even get that much. I’m probably getting like $50, and I dont think that’s worth having the entire grade contact me whenever they feel like it.”
“The dumbest question I have been asked is, ‘can we only use water guns?’ Keep in mind, I have posted that on the Instagram account 10 million times.”
Players have been known to engage in extreme measures in attempts to eliminate their target.
Senior Shayna Braunstein explained, “The craziest thing I have done so far to reach my target is when I got on Tommy Corbett’s car because I thought that would stop him from driving away. But then he drove while I was on his car, like on the hood of it, going 25 miles per hour, swerving me around – that was pretty crazy.”
“The most stressful part of senior assassin to me is the feeling that I’m constantly being watched and having my Snap map on. Usually I don’t have my Snap map on because I’m super mysterious.”
She shares that the best strategy to avoid being caught is “Literally just parking in your garage and not opening your garage door until you are locked in your car, so they can’t get you in the garage because I feel like that’s where everyone gets each other.”
Some betrayals have also arisen amid this game. For German exchange student Chris Scharf, senior, his assassin was his own host brother, Erich Hartman.
When asked what it was like to be eliminated by Hartman, he shared, “I obviously felt kinda betrayed because he is my host brother, of course I knew he would get me at some point, so I wasn’t really surprised, but still betrayed. People were trying to get into our house to get him, and I wouldn’t let them, but then the next thing, at six in the morning I’m ready to go about my business, and I have my coat in my hand, and he shoots me, smiles at me, then just says ‘I’m terribly sorry about that’.”
Scharf continues, “I’m not really planning any revenge, I mean, I was plotting on his downfall, but he sold himself out at the end. I dont know how I would get revenge, so I might leave it behind, but I should try for an opportunity to get revenge.”
Like other players, he has witnessed some intense tactics that different players have employed to advance to the next round.
“Probably the craziest thing is when Erich had a bounty on him, because like ten people showedup to our house for hours. And Benji Kane, Sasha McKinney, and Jack Bell waited there for like three hours, and I was just talking to them for so long.”
While everyone has hopes that their team will be the one to come home with the cash, seniors have suspicions about who they think will come out on top.
“I think that Sierra Gill has a good chance. Or honestly, Thomas Forensich and Jonah Wenzler could win just because they do nothing.” Khan says.
Scharf shares, “I think Anissa Barett, because that’s just how I feel, I’ve got a good stomach feeling about it. And when I have that feeling, it’s usually right.”
Cody Buttermore, senior, predicts, “Lucas Wirth and Carter Knight are locked in.”
Nathan Bigonia says “Jake Wang and Luke Djurasovic could win because they don’t do anything. And P.S. Jake works at the WAC (Wisconsin Athletic Club) in Glendale from 9-1 on Saturdays.”
