Leah Selm

Hands in the air, members of the softball team, celebrate together at home plate. The team played kickball during practice Oct. 5 for some team bonding. “[After team bonding activities] girls who I didn’t feel like I could talk to before I was able to talk with because I now knew we had things in common and could joke around,” Leahy said. “It helped expand my friendships of the team.”

What do toilet paper, donuts and sticky notes have in common? They are all key aspects of the softball team’s unique traditions.

Each season the team has a sleepover where they teepee the coach’s house. The tradition began eight years ago when Hal Whittaker was the head coach. Now, head coach Jeffrey Chazen is the recipient of the mischief.

“At first when I found out about the sleepover and the traditions [as a freshman], I was excited because I had never teepeed anyone, but then I was kind of nervous thinking, ‘I didn’t want to be the freshman who messed it up and got us caught by Chazen,’” sophomore Megan Leahy said.

The girls usually go at about 3 a.m. to do the teepeeing. They also decorate the yard with traffic cones and caution tape.

“Everyone has to be super quiet and we wear all black. It gives you an adrenaline rush for sure. It is always really fun to unroll the toilet paper and get to throw it everywhere,” Leahy said.

Although Chazen knows this will happen each year, the date of the team sleepover is always kept under wraps. In recent years, the girls have also gone to coach John Sloop’s house, where they covered his car in sticky notes with his favorite sayings written on them.

“I love to see his reaction in the morning. He is usually pretty surprised,” senior Taylor Caton said. “And Sloop was really shocked because he didn’t know we had his address.”

Around 8 a.m. the next morning, the girls usually go back to Chazen’s house to help him clean up. He gets them donuts and they all enjoy breakfast together.

“[The teepeeing] does not bother me as much as it bothers my wife,” Chazen said. “As long as they clean up and no damage is done we are okay.”

The sleepover, which took place Sept. 22, included another team tradition: the scavenger hunt.

“We drive around town and have to sing to strangers, take a picture with a dog, do a cheerleading stunt, get a random person’s number. My team has always lost, but it is always a lot of fun,” Caton said. “This year Alexis Abney’s team won. We have one hour to complete the tasks before you have to be back at the school or wherever the meeting point is and whoever got the most wins.”

In addition to these old traditions, the team develops new bonding activities each year.

“When one of our games was canceled, we got to go to Chazen’s room and play trivia and eat pizza together, which was really fun. Team bonding helps us understand each other more,” senior Lauren Horn said.

Because of the team’s smaller roster sizes over the past several years, the whole softball program has recently connected as a single team.

“How small we are makes us closer than other teams,” Horn said “Being one big team where everyone comes to the varsity games and having everyone together at practice really helps to build a unique kind of unity.”