Tearing across the field, the ladies of the Junior and Senior classes took part in Bear River’s annual Powder Puff Game on Thursday, October 11 with the Juniors winning the game 14-0.
Powder Puff is a flag football game with entirely girl teams coached by Bruin Varsity Football players. Lia Sanders, a junior, went on to explain.
“It’s the girl version of football,” she said. “Guys can do it, why can’t girls [too]?”
Marie-Claire Desplancke, a senior, described how she came to sign up to participate in the game.
“The reason why I joined powder puff was one, it was my senior year,” she said. “My friends [also] kind of encouraged me to do it. It looked to be really fun, and it was really fun even though we did lose. … I hope Jenna LaPlante is okay, I may have pushed her out of the way a few times. [But overall] I think it was a good experience.”
Matt MacDonald, Bear River’s Activities Director and Leadership teacher, described why Bear River introduced this event.
“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “I like being able to watch some of the football guys try to coach. I think they get some appreciation for how difficult that can be. I [also] think some of the girl athletes competing in it get a new appreciation for what it’s like to play football.”
According to Desplancke, the Leadership students run the entire event, from making sure the field is open for use to gathering the players. Mr. MacDonald expressed how proud he was of them.
“This year, we had students announcing, which is great,” he said. “We’ll have students run the ticket booth, they secure the flags, they get the referees, they talk to Paco to get the field cleared, they talk to the different booster organizations that are going to run the snack bar, they set up and they clean up. … I think this year, profit wise, I think ASB made about $700 or so, which is a really cool thing.”
Logan Jenkins, a senior and one of the coaches for the Senior Powder Puff team, went into detail on what he did as a coach.
“Pretty much [I] set up the team,” he said.”… I told every coach what to do. … I was kind of the head coach, pretty much called the offense.”
Jenkins also explained how Powder Puff compares to an actual game of football.
“Powder Puff is so much lower than an actual game,” he said. “I get more into the Powder Puff game because I was screaming at the girls trying to tell them what to do.”
As per Mr. McDonald’s word, this event has been a part of Bear River for about 10 years, maybe even more. Though many Bruins feel the event is great as it is, some believe there is always room for improvement. Desplancke commented on what she believes needs to be improved about this event.
“It was planned very last minute where there was only a total of four practices,” she said. “Some students, seniors and juniors, didn’t show up to any of the practices and they just showed up to the game thinking that they were going to play, and they didn’t … but other than that people just need to show up or it needs to be held in the springtime.”
Many onlookers may have realized that this football game was missing the cheerleaders. Mr. MacDonald added why there were no male cheerleaders cheering the girls on.
“Couple of the girls approached us about that,” he said. “Some of the cheerleaders [wanted to teach] the guys some of the actual cheers they do … then nobody really had interest in doing it … At that point, I think it was so late in the process that people never did it. … If people have interest in wanting to do that, in the future years, certainly, we’ll get that started.”
As a final note, Mr. MacDonald expressed how excited he is for the next year’s Powder Puff game.
“We look forward to continuing doing it for many years to come,” he said.
