By Grace BENNETT, intern

On May 31, the Crescenta Valley High School (CVHS) ComedySportz (CSZ) High School League team hosted its sixth annual “Shindig” at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood. Due to CVHS’ recent second consecutive win at the Improv Madness Finals, members of the league also played in a match with the ComedySportz Los Angeles Professional League as a reward for their efforts.

The ceremony was initiated by Gavin Hall, ComedySportz advisor and teacher at CVHS, who gave a brief summary of the year’s highlights. Following this, Hall distributed the awards designated for outstanding parents of students in the league who contributed great amounts of their time to the program.

The accolades continued as Hall presented trophies to the team of student advisors and coaches, including Mike Bomar, Grace Bennett, Athena Bamrick, Catherine Carothers, Carsten Sondergaard, Anthony Norkus and Nick Mitchell. After this, the seniors on the team were given special recognition, which included the tradition of Hall reading out the team members’ original application.

The players and their families returned to the theater after a short dinner break prepared for a match alongside ComedySportz’s most prestigious of leagues. CVHS players Carsten Sondergaard and Ella Hasty were on the red team joined by pro-league players Sarah Parga and Brendan Weinhold. High school students Welles Crowther and Catherine Carothers played alongside Rick Steadman and Taylor Jarvis; professional league member Ben Marcell coached both halves as well.

The first half was kicked off by a game of Expert Challenge in which both teams had to present the audience with opinions and facts from a so-called “expert” point of view on a random topic; the suggestion used in this round was “breakfast cereals.” The game ended with the red team gaining five points.

Both sides played fiercely. The red team decided on a game of “Four Square” where Sondergaard and Weinhold played two Englishmen stuck in a bell tower. This game was up against the blue team’s efforts in “New Choice,” in which CVHS player Welles Crowther had to obey the ref’s commands to come up with new ways to enter a scene, say her lines, etc. After this set, the blue team proved its excellence by winning five points.

Following this, both teams played in one more set. The red team performed “Pavlov’s Response” where Carsten Sondergaard received a point for each correct guess he made regarding the other players’ reactions to Sondergaard’s triggers. The blue team combatted this with an equally thrilling game of “Radio” that featured CVHS Catherine Carothers’ performance of a fake radio station featuring geological rock formations. In the end, though, the red team ended up winning five points.

The end of the first half was marked with a rhythmic game of “Doo Doo Run Run” in which both the red and blue sides attempted to come up with rhymes based off of a name then sing it in tempo with the beat. This game was won by the red team, making the first half close with a score of 18 to 12, red team to blue team.

The second half introduced four new players from CVHS: Anthony Norkus, Athena Bamrick, Grace Bennett and Nick Desmond. Both teams competed in a joined round of “What You Got,” where a player had to evoke an action based on a suggestion and keep their ideas in rhythm. This was won by the red team, earning them five points.

The red team then followed this with a round of “Good Bad Worse” that had Sarah Parga act as a talk show host who asked three contestants for advice on a suggested topic. Despite this game garnering many laughs from the audience, the blue team won five points for their depiction of “Slo-mo Olympics,” in which players Taylor Jarvis and Anthony Norkus pretended to be Olympian room-cleaners.

The second half closed with the pun-rich game of “185.” Players made puns about occupations, objects and people, earning a point for every joke the team made. To end the night, the red team defeated the blue team with a score of 24 to 22.

  Grace BENNETT