It’s homecoming week in Windsor and the activities were kicked off Monday night with electric powder puff football.
Powder puff is an annual event run by the Student Council during homecoming week and this year it kicked off the line of events. These events range from powder puff at the beginning of the week, to the bonfire on Tuesday night, peach fuzz Wednesday night, the parade after school on Thursday, the football game on Friday night and the dance on Saturday night.
This year at powder puff, there were four teams, one from each class. While this event is always meant to be fun, it is still a competition among the competing classes and coaches.
Deacon Schmitt (11) was one the coaches for the junior class team and was proud of how his team performed this year. “We got a heck of a team,” Schmitt said. “We won last year so we’re confident. We love doing what we do and we just got a team of studs out here.”
Student Council co-executive president Madi Romme (12) was entrusted with setting up powder puff this year and certainly did not disappoint. With large student engagement in the event this year, Romme thought it a great success: “It’s a lot of encouraging greater school participation, having people sign up in each grade,” Romme said. “It’s kind of difficult because the freshmen are usually a little more hesitant to sign up …. There’s a lot of encouragement and telling them it’s going to be so fun.”
Another consideration for Romme was finding referees to officiate the games, but fortunately for her, Samuel Boshart (staff) teaches a sports officiating class. “We have to plan the games, so we have to find referees. This year we used students from Boshart’s sports officiating class to referee our games,” Romme said.
Beyond the set-up are the games themselves. This year there were two rounds of games, the first being the juniors against the freshmen and the seniors against the sophomores. The juniors defeated the freshmen in the first round and took on the seniors, who had defeated the sophomores, in the second round.
It was a close game between the juniors and seniors, with the seniors scoring first and scoring every drive thereafter except for one. The juniors followed with a quick touchdown and two-point conversion and went into halftime up by a touchdown. Coming out of halftime, the seniors delivered a long drive, finishing with a touchdown and two-point conversion. The juniors responded with a quick score and returned the ball to the seniors with two minutes left to play. The seniors scored but ran out of time to score another two-point conversion.
The juniors finished the night on top, excited to sport their second powder puff win in back-to-back years. Kiana Cumings (11) said, “It went a lot better than last, especially because I didn’t do very good. But I think we learned from last year and we started a little rough but we carried through and beat the seniors.” Cumings was nominated one of the MVPs of her team by Schmitt thanks to her speed and ability to carry the ball for several touchdowns.
The second MVP for the junior team was Braely Martinez (11). Martinez was a critical piece of the team’s defense, making several major plays to slow the seniors’ advance: “I didn’t get to play last year, but we started off a little rough, but in the end we were able to get the win.”
Powder puff players have many different reasons for participating. Cumings said, “I think it’s fun because as a girl, it’s one of the only chances you get to play football.”
Powder puff is a greatly cherished tradition at Windsor: “I think it’s a great tradition and I hope that we continue to do it every year,” Romme said.
