The Hope Squad and the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) came together two weeks ago to host the high school’s first annual kickball tournament. Family, faculty and students were all invited to sign up and play together in the intramural tournament on April 8. The tournament was a combined effort by the PTSA and the Hope Squad to institute healthy and engaging activities to bring together the community.

“We, as the PTSA, were trying to find some ways to incorporate healthy living [activities] that would be active and fun across parents, teachers and admin, [in which] all could participate,” vice president of programs on the PTSA, Karen Silcox said. “We got in touch with the Hope Squad because they simultaneously had the idea to create a kickball tournament, so we kind of just put it together that we would help support their idea, and help the students and whatever they needed from the PTSA to make it happen.”

The Hope Squad was recently introduced to Dripping Springs as an organization and is working to establish themselves and their mission within the school community. 

“Hope Squad is a mental health and suicide-prevention organization that we started this year in hopes to spread mental resilience and positivity throughout campus and to be a proactive force in mental health,” geometry teacher and Hope Squad sponsor Brent Toups said.

Members of the squad are nominated by their peers and are trained in understanding signs of suicidal behavior, working to educate the entire student body on these issues and lessen the stigma surrounding them. 

“I am definitely not the leader, this is a 100% student-led organization,” Toups said. “I’m here to help them do the things that they feel are going to have the most impact, but I help in providing my experience and teaching some of the content that Hope Squad provides.”

According to the Hope Squad organization’s website, two of its core values are self care and community, which the students embraced in organizing this tournament.

“We wanted to get students, teachers and parents out on the field, outside of school, having fun, playing together and building those relationships outside of the classroom,” Toups said. “[The goal was] really just to get the Hope Squad name out there and show that we’re here to do fun, proactive things that are going to build our community up.” 

The objective to incorporate people from all aspects of the DSHS community into the tournament seems to have been accomplished. Multiple classes formed into kickball teams for the game, and parents and students showed up to root for their children and peers. 

“We’ve done a lot of work this year to build our support for Hope Squad,” Toups said. “Once we started putting it out there, we had great teachers like Ms. Tennison and Ms. Whitacre, as well as our AP team who were eager to jump at the chance to support Hope Squad and get out there and have a good time, so they deserve credit for that.”

The winning team consisted primarily of students from the American Studies pilot program, which is a combination of AP US History and AP Language and Composition, led by their history teacher Angela Tennison.

“I have 28 years [of] coaching experience,” Tennison said. “Predominantly team sports. Kickball, I’ve just enjoyed for leisure until last week, when we had to bring out our competitive nature to try and win the kickball tournament.”

And win, they did. While the goal of the tournament was focused on community engagement and healthy fun, triumph is certainly still enjoyable.

“Victory is always sweet,” Tennison said. “Just like with any endeavor, when you’re competing against others, winning is always the best way to end a competition.”

The whole community had a blast at the game and the students were thrilled with their win, celebrating with high-fives and cheers.

“It felt great to win, but it also felt appropriate,” junior Walter Bristol, a member of the winning team, said. “It really felt like that was what we were there for. We really A-PUSHed the score over the statistics team, so, you know, math isn’t everything.”

Overall, the event was extremely successful, with a great turnout thanks to the efforts of the hardworking organizers of both the PTSA and Hope Squad.

“Nobody really knew what to expect, given how it is a first-time thing,” Bristol said. “And the Hope Squad doesn’t really have much of a present feeling at school, like they’re still a pretty new thing for this year. For being their first event, they were able to get a pretty good group together, and they seem well-organized.”

People across the board enjoyed the event, and are anticipating similar events to participate in going forward.

“I think that they should do more intramural-type things,” Tennison said. “I think students would really get engaged and have fun with games that you used to play when you were young that are still entertaining. So, I think the concept’s great and I hope they keep doing it.”

Looking to the future, plans are already being put in place to continue with more games and community ventures like this.

“We very much would like to do more events like that, and we’re already gonna start planning the second-annual kickball tournament,” Toups said.

This experiment offers a possibility for the implementation of a new practice of fun and healthy opportunities for community engagement within the high school.

“They’re calling this the ‘Inaugural Kickball Tournament,’” Silcox said. “So hopefully this was the start to a fun tradition to be able to carry on in years in the future.”