Every year, homecoming week brings its share of excitement to Chamblee. There are a few standard activities: dress-up days the week before, the football game, the dance, and the sometimes-forgotten powderpuff football and volleyball games.
Powderpuff football and volleyball games aren’t your typical sporting events; for football, girls are the players, and for volleyball, boys. Additionally, the activities have no teacher sponsors and are completely student-run. Finally, there isn’t one Chamblee team competing against rival schools, like Dunwoody. Instead, teams of juniors and seniors are formed, and the two grades compete against each other.
Despite this year being only the second year of Powderpuff volleyball, the activity has already been very popular among upperclassmen boys. This year, 20 seniors tried out for the Powderpuff team but only 12 made the team.
“Tryouts were an hour and a half and we did basic skills,” said senior coach Natalie Roberts. “We split the seniors in two. We had two clipboards, and we had the entire volleyball team there too, so we had them rate people. A lot of the decision to make cuts was based on people who were on the actual boys’ volleyball team last spring, and the people who played last year, and basically skill and athletic ability.”
In an interview conducted before the volleyball game, Roberts was looking forward to competing against the juniors.
“[I’m excited for] hopefully winning,” said Roberts. “It’s just so much fun when, last year, we beat the seniors. Hopefully that doesn’t happen this year. But I don’t know, it’s just so much fun, because you get so caught up in the moment.”
Junior Jordany Zamor was excited about being a part of the Powderpuff team.
“I remember last year seeing all the guys trying out, it looked like a lot of fun,” said Zamor. “I’ve always felt like volleyball was a sport that I wanted to try.”
And for Zamor, being a part of the team turned out to be very enjoyable.
“I feel like it’s really fun; everyone’s encouraging a lot of fun,” said Zamor. “Everyone’s intentions are really fun-oriented, rather than focusing on winning. I mean, we all want to win, but we primarily want to have a good time.”
Junior Teagan Furbish was able to try out for the girl’s Powderpuff football team for the first time this year.
“I just wanted to participate in student life and have fun being active,” said Furbish. “The practices have been great, our coaches are very enthusiastic and so are the players. I’m just having a good time and enjoying our awesome team dynamic, as well as learning a bit about football.”
Junior coaches Sydney Murray, Jason Allen, Gib Stanfield, Jake Thompson and Robert Felton ran a regular practice schedule.
“There are practices Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 4:00-5:30,” said Murray. “We’re going to start by getting the girls warmed up through catching. We’re just going to have two lines, and they’re going to throw to each other. And then we’re going to run some offensive plays, some defensive plays, and then that’s going to be the practice. And we’re going to win.”
Coach Murray was glad to have had the opportunity to coach the Powderpuff team.
“A lot of my friends were [coaching], and Jason mentioned the idea to me,” said Murray. “I had been thinking about Powderpuff for a while, and all the football people had been talking about how fun it was going to be, but I could never participate because I was playing football. Since I’m not playing football this year I decided to be a coach.”
The boys volleyball game was played on Friday, October 27 after school. Due to an abundance of mistakes and unforced errors, the seniors only narrowly beat the juniors first round 25-23, but won the second round more decisively, 25-17.
During the highly competitive girls football game on Friday, November 3, the smaller-than-regulation team of five seniors got a quick touchdown over the team of 13 juniors to start the game. The seniors prevailed in the hour-long game, winning 28-21 over the juniors.
