By: Grace-May Hansen, Ava Levin, and Sophie Dempsey
In preparation for the MCAL football playoffs, the varsity football team gained fifteen new players. Many of the promoted freshmen and sophomores participated in the long-held tradition of head shaving. Upperclassmen shave the promoted player’s head in different styles, such as a checkerboard pattern (sophomore, Seth Meyers), a set of headphones (freshman, Daniel Rolivich), and the Hog Rider from Clash Royale (freshman, Michael Sargent). This year, the haircuts were done before the first playoff game on November 12th.
The tradition acts as a lighthearted and exciting way to welcome newcomers before the first playoff game. “It’s all optional, there are people on our team who decided not to do it, we give them the option to cut their hair, and they decide the haircut they get,” senior and team captain Ben Langford said.
Freshman Michael Sargent felt proud to receive his haircut, “I wasn’t embarrassed, I took it as a sense of pride getting pulled up to varsity because only a few do,” he said.
This year, Langford created a Tiktok video which documented the haircuts, and to his astonishment, the video went viral. “I was not expecting it, I came back from practice and it was at almost one million views,” Langford said. Sargent was also pleasantly surprised to see the video go viral. “I thought it was pretty cool. Like when he posted it we thought it would only get maybe hundreds of views but we didn’t think it would take off like that,” Sargent said.
The video ended up reaching approximately thirty million views across all platforms and was reposted on several popular accounts such as Barstool Sports, Overtime, House of Highlights, and MaxPreps. “It was really cool at first, I felt like a celebrity for a bit, then it had its backlash and I was like, you know maybe this is not worth it,” Langford said. He later took down the original video “so things didn’t escalate and other situations did not come out of it.”
The team is set to compete in the state championship for the 4A division on December 10th against Granada Hills Charter. They are the first team in MCAL history to win back to back NCS titles and are returning after their victory in 2021.
