On Friday, February 26, the classes and faculty of BHS went to war. “Battle of the Classes 2016” was a fierce competition between the “Fresh Prince Freshmen,” “Slytherin Sophomores,” “Jukebox Juniors,” and “Star Wars Seniors.”

To start off the annual battle, each class performed their intro dance, which is when each class and the faculty introduce their themes to the judges and the crowd of spectators. The juniors and seniors actually tied for the intro dance this year, but that’s alright—because the seniors won best banner.

Musical chairs followed the intro dance, and it got intense. The last three people fighting for a spot in the final round was senior Angelo Micciche, senior Joe Tierney (a crowd favorite), and Mr. McCoy, battling for the faculty squad. For the entire week before, Mr. McCoy and Joe Tierney could be heard jawing about this impending contest in the hallways, even on the morning announcements. Joe got knocked out of the game, but Angelo stepped up and won musical chairs for the seniors, a great victory.

The “Eating Contest” is something from which a number of people glean great joy, but it’s extremely disgusting by any measure. This year, the item that had to be eaten was Cool Whip. The juniors won this event, beating the seniors by a five-second margin.

“Bethpage Scooter Speedway” was next, and there was a bit of controversy with this event. Many people struggle with this one, because you have to wiggle your arms and your body simultaneously. Originally, the juniors came in first, seniors came in third, and freshman came in dead last because of a defective scooter with a broken wheel—perhaps an apt metaphor for their overall performance. The judges also realized that most participants were not fully aware of the rules. They decided to review the rules again, give the freshmen a functional scooter, and redo the event. Many juniors were incensed when the seniors won the second try and felt that the redo only happened because the seniors did not win the first time. Little did they know: they were one of the groups who did not follow the rules correctly the first time.

The “If I Was” dance this year was themed “If I was the local weather girl” and participants choreographed and performed a dance to The Weather Girls “It’s Raining Men.” The seniors won this event with a dance that was “carefully choreographed and well executed,” according to senior Val Kress. Seniors Madeline Kuhlke, Jamie Olanick, Steph Vayner, Anthony Regateiro, John Marchelos, and Tommy Valenti performed the “If I Was” dance for the seniors. Allie Horemis was also involved in this event, helping to choreograph the dance and sewing Velcro onto regular pants to create breakaways.

The “Hula Hoop competition” may seem simple, but working together as a team and having good chemistry when trying to step through the plastic ring can be harder than it looks. The sophomores dominated the hula hoop competition, taking first place.

“Fish out of Water” took a bad turn and turned into a wheelbarrow race. Originally, eight students—four boys and four girls—were supposed to run in flippers up and down the gym. When they were placing the flippers down in front of each cone, the judges setting up the event realized that the new flippers didn’t have backs on them and would fall off our feet. They then found better flippers, but not enough, so they turned the whole thing into a wheelbarrow race. The juniors won this event.

The “Tug of War” came down to an intense standoff between the juniors and the seniors. Lasting a little over full two minutes—which felt closer to two hours to the fatigued participants and anxious spectators—the last round of this event began evenly matched. Towards the end, the seniors began losing energy and were dragged across the floor. Right before the juniors crossed the final line, the seniors got a final kick of energy.

Senior Miranda Ortiz described this feeling: “We all knew it was our last event of our last Battle, so I think we all knew that we wanted to end on that win.”

And so they did.