Every year, the Seniors of Sonoma Academy do their very best to hunt each other down in a game with the most sinister of intentions.
It’s called Senior Splashin’, the name being a school-friendly take on Senior Assassin, and is played through an app under the same name. From late April to May, graduating classes all across the country take part in a mostly innocent challenge: to be the last senior standing.
RULES:
The basic premise of the game is simple: students, either in duos or on their own, all pay a small amount of money to be added to the ‘pot,’ which the victor receives. Participants are then randomly assigned a team to hunt down and ‘kill’ their targets with water guns. All the while, another team is hunting them down. The app prevents teams from cross-targeting, or trying to hunt the team that’s hunting you. Additionally, all eliminations must be filmed and uploaded to the Splashin’ app, where the leaders can confirm their validity.
To protect yourself from attack, you can wear swim goggles or inflated floaties, both of which are meant to be a little embarrassing to wear outside. The goggles have to be around your forehead or on your eyes, and the floaties must be visible at all times. These markers are a telltale sign that a student is participating—you may see a group of senior boys walking around Montgomery Village, adorned with colorful goggles.
The game administrators can temporarily disable these protections, thus making it easier to eliminate targets. Admins can also call a “purge,” where any surviving participant can get anyone. It’s a free-for-all, and targets don’t matter.
Some rules can’t be modified. It’s illegal in the game to do anything illegal in real life: breaking into houses, cars or other private property is not allowed. You can only enter someone’s house if an immediate family member lets you in, and you need their permission on video for it to be valid.
You’re also banned from trying to eliminate anyone in a moving vehicle (think drive-by style eliminations), and you cannot try to get your targets at their places of work. If someone works at a local ice cream shop, for example, you’re not allowed to simply walk up to the counter and shoot them.
Finally, for major rules, off-campus school-sponsored events are also ‘safe zones.’ This includes athletic events (like away games and track meets), field trips and performances. However, once an event ends, Splashin’ is live again.
THE GAME, 2026:
Our 2026 Splashin’ game is being run by Juliette Coté (‘26) and Maddie Castro (‘26). One leader has been set into this role since last summer—Coté was nominated by Savannah Guillot (‘25), the previous Splashin’ leader who ran the Class of 2025 competition anonymously. According to Coté, Gulliot passed the role to her because she does “a lot on social media” (alongside managing the Paw Print’s own Instagram account, Coté also posts prolifically on her own social media pages).
However, Coté underestimated what the leadership role entailed: “I thought it was just running the social media,” she said, “putting everyone in the app and making sure that it was organized. I didn’t expect it to be anything more than that.”
Once it became apparent that organizing and running the game would be more difficult, Coté reached out to Castro and asked if she could co-lead with her. This worked well for Castro, who said she’d been looking for an alternative to actually playing the game: “I don’t want to have people come to my house. I don’t want to deal with that.”
But Castro still wanted to participate, so leading seemed like the best option.
Thus, the duo was ready. Together, they began to spread word of the game. Coté had already made an Instagram account months prior, but the pair augmented that with emails, PS announcements, and a slideshow presentation during Friday Flex Time. They laid out the basic rules outlined at the beginning of this article.
For our competition, the price to compete was set at $10 per teammate. Castro and Coté had made our competition a duos competition, and each student was on their own as far as picking a teammate. The app did not assign partners.
At the beginning of round one, there were 35 teams, and 68 competitors in total (two students played as singles, meaning they were alone on their team).
Contenders could choose their teams’ names, and many chose various water-related puns, some more printable than others. There were the Hydro Hitmen, the Splash Mob, the Bubble Bursters, the Splashin Seahorses, the Blond Tsunami and many more.
Participants purchased their goggles and water guns, and prepared themselves for battle.
ROUND ONE:
Round one began around 6:00 am on Monday, April 13th. That first Monday was uneventful—students were too paranoid to take off their goggles, and no ‘kills’ were recorded.
The drama began on Day 2, when five eliminations were uploaded. Lynna Xu (‘26) was the first to go, eliminated by Matthew Hobson (‘26) after her tennis match. The sports theme continued throughout the day: Atticus Moss (‘26) was eliminated by Elijah Borjon (‘26) after his lacrosse game and Aidan Crockett (‘26) was eliminated by Gale Gearinger (‘26) while he sat in his car post-soccer practice.
That week proved to be the most action-packed one so far of Senior Splashin’. It also featured one of the most contentious eliminations: the aforementioned ‘kill’ of Moss. It was contested right away by the deceased, who claimed on the Splashin’ group chat that the kill was invalid.
Essentially, the Boys Lacrosse team had, prior to the game, made an agreement that no member of the team could get another player during or after the game (until teammates were in the parking lot). Borjon claimed that because he wasn’t technically a part of the team, he was merely taking photos at the game and observing; this agreement didn’t apply to him, while Moss insisted that “non-players shouldn’t be able to come onto the field during post-game activities and get [contestants] out.”
After almost two days of discussion in the group chat, Castro and Coté eventually decided that Moss was eliminated, announcing the news at PS to a bloodthirsty crowd. The biggest drama of Round 1 was settled. And a little over a week later, at its conclusion, twenty-seven eliminations had been recorded.
ROUND TWO:
Round two began on Friday, April 24th, at 6 am. However, despite one first-day kill, it quickly became apparent that this round had a different ‘vibe’ compared to the previous action-packed sequence.
Some contestants were losing steam, their focus drawn away from the game towards incoming tests and final projects. Eliminations became less common, and the Administrators had to initiate more Purges and special events to retain participation.
These worked, to a degree: ten eliminations were logged during this round, which included contestant Leif Warnelius-Miller (‘26) going on an impressive 3-kill rampage during a purge on May 3rd. However, some other contestants stopped trying altogether and accepted the automatic disqualification for not eliminating another player by the end of the round.
Thus, at the closing of Round Two, more than half of the contestants were no longer in the running. The field was narrowing.
ROUND THREE:
Round three began at 6am on Friday, May 8, and it continued the theme of some participants losing interest while others stayed locked in. Kills kept coming in—five more were recorded—but while some were legitimately earned, others were freely ‘gifted’ from friends who’d become tired of the game.
Therefore, this round had less action than either of the previous ones.
ROUND FOUR:
At the time of publishing, the game is currently in the middle of Round Four. There have been sixty-one total eliminations across all rounds, with a total of forty-five “kills” and sixteen automatic disqualifications for inaction.
Seven Contestants remain—three full teams and one surviving solo member. The list consists of Gale Gearinger (‘26) and Alex Sae (‘26) of the ‘Gangnam Style Geysers’, Gus Miller (‘26) and Summer Weiner (‘26) of ‘Gus n Summer’, An Ly (‘26) and Caitlin Koida (‘26) of the ‘Hydro Hitmen’, and Atticus Moss of the ‘Squirting Samurais’.
Even though Moss had been eliminated previously, he was reinstated into the game during the second round. Coté explained that she and Castro were worried about lessening engagement and decided that “it would be funny” to bring Moss back “like in The Bachelor when they bring out the worst person and they’re like, ‘I’m back’ and you’re just so upset.” At the end of the day, Coté said, ”hatred kind of brings people together… Atticus being back in would get people more engaged.”
Both leaders are unsure about the effect this ended up having, but Moss has since managed to stay alive. Thus, the remaining seven continue to battle it out for the large pot of money that awaits the victors. Once the constants are narrowed down to two surviving teams, Coté and Castro will initiate the “final challenge” to decide the winner.
Both leaders declined to go into detail about this challenge, but it promises to be an interesting conclusion to a fun and memorable Senior activity. If you’re interested in following along, stay tuned by following the Splashin’ Instagram account (@senior.splash2026) and check in with your favorite surviving contestant!
Maddie • Jun 1, 2026 at 2:57 pm
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