One hundred and seventy-four Granite Bay High School seniors began wearing floaties and goggles in public, chasing each other around with squirt guns, on April 20, 2022. 

Their ultimate intent?

Win $870.

“I just thought (participating in Senior Assassin would) be a fun thing to do for like senior year. … I figured I might as well, especially since … COVID and stuff took away a lot of … junior year,” senior Lynette Voellm said.

Senior Assassin is a student-organized game in which participants–seniors at GBHS–pair up and try to get other teams out by shooting them with a water gun. Seniors Kerri Caulfield and Paige Beater initiated the game and run the @gbhs_senior_assassin Instagram account.

“Kelly Jones, who was my neighbor and one of my good friends, she’s in the grade above us. She ran (Senior Assassin) last year,” Caulfield said. “And she kept on saying … that we should run it and we were waiting for someone else to take the responsibility and do it but no one did.”

After the Instagram account associated with Senior Assassin was created, those who wanted to play had to decide who they would partner up with so they could submit their names to the account.

“Brady (Nickle) actually decided to be my partner…years ago … when we saw it playing like at another school freshman year,” Aiden Sanchez, senior, said. “And we both … decided then… if we ever played the game … him and I are going to be partners … So, thankfully, it happened.”

In order to participate, each pair dropped off an entrance fee of $10 in the GBHS parking lot, which is how the sum of $870 was procured.

“The first round, I think we were in the parking lot after powderpuff practice for three hours doing… team assignments and stuff, but now it doesn’t take too long because there’s only like twenty-something teams left,” Beater said.

Each set of partners was assigned a target for each round. To stay in the game and advance to the next round, the seniors must get their target out. Alternatively, they may get anyone out on a purge day. Typically, wearing floaties or goggles means that if a participant gets squirted while out and about, they will be immune from elimination.

However, anyone can get out on purge days, so wearing floaties or goggles does not offer protection. There is one purge day per round.

“On purge days, I’ll have my mom or my dad … go outside and … look around in our front yard and, like, in our bushes and stuff to make sure no one’s, like, hiding in there and then I run to my car,” senior Kristi Truong said.

There are restrictions on how students can be eliminated from the game. Neither the victim nor the assassin can be driving, and students cannot be eliminated on school property, during sports practice, or during work.

“I was … very dramatically killed … at my signing night for my soccer club, and I didn’t think people would be able to (get me out) because I thought it was … considered a practice,” Truong said.

The rules of the game have evolved as the rounds progressed, and so have the methods that the participants have been using to get other people out.

“The first week that we started playing, the people who had me as a target, they… hid in the back of my truck, like, in the bed of my truck,” Truong said, “while I was volunteering, and then when I went to end it, I, like, drove to Raley’s and I did not know they were in there. They were fully in there while I was driving to Raleys.”

Senior Diego Angelina De La Cruz said that he “completely backstab(s) people” to stay in the game and claimed that participants have started paying other people to get someone out.

“I think the most fun thing is … the strategics of it all and trying to find out … where you’re targeted and trying to find out their schedule and you really have to plan everything out but it’s so fun doing that, … with the partner,” Voellm said. “Makes me feel like a detective.”