Social Media has a huge impact on high schoolers in their everyday lives, but it also can greatly impact student events and cause tension. The annual powderpuff game has been known to be greatly influenced by social media. These impacts are mostly negative and can cause stress for the girls playing.

Last year, there was a lot of online fights and passive aggressive posts between the junior and senior teams. The “beef” started between teams can lead to some players being more aggressive towards each other in the game. Girls who didn’t even know each other prior to powderpuff will get wrapped up in the social media aspects of the game and will end up not liking each other. This is something the players anticipate each year.

Senior Elena Fajardo spoke of the tension between the teams last year along with what it entails.

“Last year, there were a few girls on our team who were being singled out by the seniors and being told through posts on VSCO and Instagram that they were going to be hurt in the game. This just creates unnecessary beef between the players, and honestly, scares the girls being singled out,” Fajardo said.

High schoolers have the power to come at each other from all angles with all these different platforms. The majority of these fights started are on VSCO, Instagram, and GroupMe. This gives the girls many different ways to stirrup drama in anticipation of the game.

“I never was attacked by anyone on social media before the game, but the people who were really got into the game and it gave them a reason to seek out other people and really try and win. So, I don’t really know if it is a problem or not because it motivates the players to really try,”  Fajardo said.

The coaches know a little bit about what goes on with the teams when they are not in school or practice. Mr. Hooker has coached the class of 2019 for the past two years and knows about the infamous drama between the teams.

“The girls are not always friendly when it comes to the powderpuff season. We all know they get very into it and it is great to the passion behind the players. It isn’t so great when girls get to the point where they feel like they aren’t going to be safe in the game and that is where we step in,” Hooker said.

The coaches make sure to tell the girls that they should not pay to much attention to these comments online and should just play their best and use that as their motivation. The girls work extremely hard in practice and do not need to fight online to win.

Senior Tess Greenwood talked about how the team made an effort this year to cut down on their social media presence. The team wanted to focus on winning this year.

“We really haven’t gotten involved in much drama this year. I think last year after being the underclassmen team we felt the effects of the drama and wanted to focus more on the game. We really want a win this year, and getting caught up in all the drama like last year didn’t feel worth it to us,” Greenwood said.

The seniors are hungry for a win this year and maybe the trick to achieving that was not getting wrapped up in all the extra drama powderpuff has previously brought up.