Upperclassman girls have a rare opportunity every year around homecoming week: to play football on the field. On September 17, junior and senior girls took to the fields and played in the annual Powderpuff Game.

This year, the junior blue team took home the win with a score of 20-18 followed by the senior blue team winning with a score of 42-40. Bear Facts sat down with two senior girls on the team and talked about why so many girls play in the Powderpuff games.

Each year, the event has a large number of participants. The allure is in part because of how little opportunity girls have to play football during the year, according to Hayley Johnson, senior.

“I’m most interested because it’s something different,” Johnson said. “It’s football, and it’s a lot of things girls don’t have the opportunity to do. Girls can do softball, or girls can do soccer, and girls can do basketball as well.”

Many seniors are returning players, having greatly enjoyed their first game junior year.

“I did it last year, and my team won,” Emily Ruiz, senior, said. “I have mostly the same people on my team because we all picked each other. But mostly I did it because it’s my senior year and I want to make it the best I can.”

Sometimes, participation in the event runs in the family.

“I did it [last year] because I watched my sister do it,” Ruiz said. “I think the idea of giving girls a chance to play football is cool since we don’t do girls’ football here.”

Not all girls on the teams initially plan to play when they were underclassmen.

“It scared me so much,” Johnson said. “I remember I was watching the junior-senior game when I was a freshman, and I [thought] ‘I’d never be able to do that, that’s scary.’ I was having none of it when I was a freshman.”

By the time her senior year came around, Johnson said that many things had changed and she was willing to try playing in the game.

“I stopped doing soccer,” Johnson said. “Freshman year, I didn’t think I’d stop playing so I thought, ‘Oh, it’d be too much.’ So I changed my mind since I didn’t [play anymore], I thought [football] would be something fun.”

The Powderpuff games are enjoyable to participants from the beginning of practice to the end of the big match, according to Ruiz.

“My favorite part is the practices, being all together with all of your girl friends and just goofing off,” Ruiz said. “We can dance and have fun, [since it is not] an actual strict sport. But you also want to win, so it’s also fun competition. It’s a really fun experience to do, all girls, no boys.”