A month into the New Year and Etowah students are focused —not on their studies-– on Nerf season. The goal of Nerf Wars is to “shoot” other teams with Nerf bullets and eliminate each team’s members to win the week. The only way to win is by forming the ultimate team with the most “godly bullets” and collecting the most information about each enemy’s life.  

“Playing nerf is so fun even though I feel like someone is following me at all times,” Madi Hines, senior, said. 

In order to play, you must pay a $10 entry fee. Each member of the five-player winning team will receive $160 at the end. The students in charge of the game are commissioners Dalton Miller, RJ Head, and Dean O’Brien.  

“Being commissioner for Nerf is actually a big responsibility. We cannot make any mistakes or else the whole league will be coming for us. My favorite part is when we decide if there should be a shootout and then being the referees,” RJ Head, senior, said. 

In this game, there are different divisions: North, South, East, and West. During the regular season, all the teams in a division will play each other once. After playing every team in their division, they will play two cross division games. After the eight- week long regular season, comes playoffs. In playoffs, the teams are randomly selected to compete against each other. In order to compete, students must play during the regular season to hold a spot in playoffs. Once one team “kills” every player on the other, then they continue to the next round of playoffs. 

“This is the first year for my friends and me to play Nerf, and we are so excited to make it to playoffs,” Amiee Humphrey, junior, said. 

Nerf started out as a senior project years ago and has continued to explode in popularity. Since then, many new rules have been made. Examples include all grade levels being able to play, no reckless driving, the creation of “safe spots,” access into a home allowed by invitation only, and if a bullet is caught in someone’s hand during a shootout, then that person is out.  

“I like that there is a strong set of rules to be safe but also enough freedom to still have fun,” Patrick Ridgeway, junior, said. 

If a team is tied by the end of the week, the winner is determined by a shootout, typically located at Hobgood Park. Many people will show up to shootouts to cheer on specific teams or go for the entertainment. Players left in the game will start on opposite sides of the tennis net and shoot at each other using a PVC pipe and Nerf bullets. Once hit, players are out, and the shootout continues until every player on a team has been hit. This continues until one team wins the most out of five rounds.  

“Shootouts are really fun, and they give us something to do after school,” Barry Stros, sophomore, said. 

Nerf gets students excited for a bit of competition and is a great way to bring together different groups of people from Etowah High School. If interested, check @EtowahNerf2020 for more updates.