Students’ moms once again took the court from their kids to play a furious yet amusing basketball game as the season closed Thursday, March 10.
Known as the Battle of the Moms, this year’s Safe and Sober graduation party fundraiser, remained as entertaining as previous years.
“We’re supposed to play by basketball rules, but that doesn’t really happen,” said Angie Stamper, mother of LHS senior Dalton Stamper .
From the beginning, it was easy to see the fun, light and laugh-inducing air surrounding the game. It began with the introductions of each of the players with their respective child. Those introductions ranged from complicated handshakes to doing the splits or giving hugs and high fives. Each group had its own special action to accompany its introduction.
During the introductions, the mic relentlessly cut out, making for an even more memorable night as the audience and players alike tried to understand the unfortunate announcer.
However, the announcer was a good sport about it even though this problem persisted through the entire game, matching the hilarity and goofiness of the rest of the event. Even with the all the mic issues, the game continued without interruption.
The teams were divided in a simple way, with each matched with its own colored t-shirts — yellow shirts for the girls basketball moms, gray for boys basketball moms, black for the cheer moms and purple for mothers of wrestlers.
Despite being called a basketball game, Battle of the Moms couldn’t be any further from that.
“It’s called basketball but there are no rules,” said Jill Ralstin, mother of senior Alyssa Ralstin.
Any rules that survived quickly disappeared as referees and people running the score table received bribes of both money and candy.
“A 2- or 3-pointer shot could really be five points if we bribe the score table enough,” said Stamper.
The basketball and wrestling moms played against each other, but they didn’t steal all the glory. Cheer moms fired the crowd up from the sidelines, with somewhat varying motives.
“Our whole goal is to embarrass our children,” said Laurie Glessner, mother of senior Dawson Murphy.
However, the moms’ overall reason for playing was to support the seniors and their graduation party this spring. In coming years, seniors said they can hope this tradition will continue and that attendance will increase so more people can experience the fun that is the Battle of the Moms.