Juniors and Sophomores Homecoming Victors

Freshman and sophomores played each other at Homecoming.

By Morsal Abdali
Staff Writer | The Pacific Times

The annual homecoming game took place on Sep 20, at NP3 High School. The event consisted of two separate games, the Junior Varsity game, and the Varsity game.

The four grade levels began preparing for the game towards the end of August and each team was made up of roughly 12 students.

The Junior Varsity game was between the freshmen and sophomores.

The freshman team consisted of Harvin Chahal, Kurt Alivanera, Ivan Kurilenko, Angelo Hammons, Anthony Lundari, Ethan Tang, Jett Saetern, Alejandro Montalvan, Tyrone Patterson, and John Ritter.

While the sophomore team consisted of Arham Imran, Christian Dankoff, Rohin Purewal, Elijah Velez, Haumza Malik, Armando Ledesma, Mason Takamoto, Fahad Khan, Greg Walls, Sandiv Wjesiriwardane, Doug Yuen, and Manmeet Singh.

The Varsity game was between the juniors and the seniors.

The junior team consisted of Manuel Rodriguez, Arjun Singh, Niza Sizapizye, Aiden Kumar, Jasmeet Singh, Shabd Thind, Shazir Mahmood, Ryan Cote, Sunny Gill, Matthew Mubarak, Adam Vitaich, and Xavior Shabazz.

While the senior team consisted of Edison Duong, John Erickson, Charanjot Dhami, Nick White, Arnav Poovassery, Charles Dankoff, Surya Tannikella, Gunnet Johal, Jas Nagra, Gurkaran Singh, Jasveer Singh, and Jaden Randhawa

The Junior Varsity first ran about 4 quarters, and the sophomores won all of them. The sophomores showed their game when they ended with 42 points and the freshman ended with 29 points.

Alejandro Montalvan, a player on the freshman team said, “Going into the game I was just really nervous, I was kinda expecting my team to lose, but in the end, it’s just all about having fun. We still kept it a close game and we were even leading at half time so I feel like we did pretty decent as freshmen”

Montalvan along with nine other freshmen competed against the sophomores and among them was Haumza Malik, a star player endorsed by sophomore coach Jonathon England. After the sophomore win, Malik said, “I expected what happened, we played hard and fast. What we really wanted to do was get to the paint and make as many buckets as we could, we didn’t want to shoot too many threes. But, it was important to keep trying until the end, play as a team, and have fun.”

Likewise, the freshman and sophomore classes had lots of fun watching the entire Junior Varsity game,

After the first game was over, the NP3 dance team performed an exciting dance before the basketball commentators, Giovanni Segura and Alejandro Ibarra Campos announced the Homecoming court for each grade level.

But, one of the most suspenseful and exciting games that occurred was that of the juniors and seniors. The juniors started off strong with a powerful and encouraging spirit from the junior section, they dominated the first few quarters. The seniors began catching up to their points however, they never scored more than the juniors.

By the fourth and last quarter, the entire junior student section riled up their support for their team, the game resulted in 48 points for the juniors and 37 for the Seniors.

Star shooter, Jasmeet Singh, and junior player who was competing against his own brother in the Varsity game said, “I already knew that we were going to win, in the first game that I played my Freshman year, we lost by 1 point and we weren’t gonna let that happen again. At the next game, we are going to run it back and win by even more. Good luck to them, they better get in a lab right now.”

Another player, this time on the senior team said, “Honestly it could have went either way, we had a strong team. We just missed a lot of shots. We needed to make the shots, drive in more often, and not shoot threes when they weren’t necessary,” said Surya Tanikella.