A joint cheer erupts from the concentrated crowd of students picking up their yearbook during brunch on Wednesday outside the Media Arts Center. Seniors Victoria Senderzon and Mia-Rose Tuifua jump triumphantly up in the air, slapping hands with their elimination balls rested under their chins, while senior Jason Yang looks longingly, disappointed at the scene. Now, only two remain left in the senior elimination game, guaranteeing prizes for both participants.

Shortly after, Senderzon eliminated Tuifua and won the competition, ending the game after nearly two months.

The rules of the game are simple: stay as long in the game without being tagged by an inflatable ball. As the game continues, the guidelines for how you can get out become more challenging.

At the start, if a student wasn’t holding the ball in one of their hands they could be tagged, but towards the end, they had to be holding the ball under their chin while walking backwards with their arms straight out to the side to prevent being eliminated. The grand prize for winning is $100 and the person with the most kills receives an additional prize.

Senderzon, who ended the game with 11 kills, said she was grateful to be done with the game.

“[Winning senior elimination felt] so good, [but] it was a month and a half of kind of torture,” Senderzon said. “I enjoyed it, but the scenarios were progressively more difficult. So it felt like a relief to win.”

Senderzon refused to give up her strategy for winning the game with her official statement being “that’s still a secret.” According to Senderzon, she and Tuifua teamed up to get the final kill while there were only three people left.

“The day before we coordinated and I had Jason [Yang] as a target and I was gonna get him out,” Senderzon said. “I would win [the] top kills [place] and she [Tuifua] would get me out and would be [the] last man standing. But the targets shuffled. So I had her instead. And it turns out that if you win both top kills [place] and last man standing [place], you don’t get like both money allotments. And so the money would go to the second last man standing, which would still be her.”

The senior elimination game started with 403 players and kept cutting down over time. According to senior Caden Domingo, he found the nature of the game enjoyable.

“I thought it [senior elimination] was alright, but I got out early on,” Domingo said. “Some people got really competitive with it, but overall it was pretty fun.”

Senderzon said the game was an exciting activity for the last few months of high school.

“It was nice to focus on something when the year was ending, because I feel everyone was just relaxing and there was kind of nothing to do,” Senderzon said. “And some days I honestly felt like the only reason I was going to school was for elimination to get my targets out.”