Everyone played some sports as a kid. However, as you got older, the teams got more competitive and you realized you might not really be good. Soon, you quit the sport entirely, only playing occasionally with friends, or sometimes, not at all.
Now, Millard North has a fun way to get back into the competition.
Current seniors Luke Glasgow and Sharish Shapkota started Sports and Fitness For Youth (SAFFY) last year to let high schoolers play the sports they had enjoyed as kids again in a semi-competitive environment.
“We wanted to give kids to compete in the sports they love, you know. There’s always those kids that watch all these sports and play all these sports, but they don’t have the time to commit, or maybe even the skill,” Shapkota said.
Glasgow and Shapkota then came together to organize a sports competition. They started off with a popular choice, flag football, which quickly became popular.
“It was a simple football game, lots of people came,” Shapkota said. “This year we have a different approach.”
After the success of last year, Glasgow and Shapkota have expanded their horizons to make SAFFY an even bigger experience than one flag football tournament.
“We turned it into a league this year,” said Shapkota. “Five different sports, five different weekends. You come in with one team, and that one team plays in all the different sports.”
In SAFFY, your team will take on all the others, tournament style, in the five sports: 3 on 3 basketball, pickleball, spikeball, soccer, and the one that started it all, flag football.
“Each team is 7-10 people and with those people, you make lineups for different sports,” said Shapkota.
For each of the sports, each of the teams will compete in a one on one matchup. The winners will advance and play the other winners through several rounds until there is only one winner.
“We have this life-size bracket. It’s a lot of inspiration from March Madness, I can’t lie, with their brackets,” said Shapkota, referencing where he got the idea. “But if you advance past one round, you kind of slap your team name on and then they all celebrate that. We had the same concept.”
SAFFY has become so available that it now invites people that don’t even attend Millard North to come and play.
“People can make super teams as well,” Glasgow said. “You can recruit for specific sports. People from outside of the school can do this as well.”
Even high schoolers that don’t play a sport can get involved with SAFFY through predicting the winner.
“We made these fill out brackets, like in March Madness, for all five different sports,” said Shapkota. “People turn them in, and we give them a little prize if they get a perfect bracket.”
As well as all of this the two employed a strategy to keep the competition between teams a little closer.
“Every tournament is worth more points than the one before. So even if it is skewed in one direction, people would still show…because there’s always a chance to come back in,” said Glasgow.
With a strategy like this, competition stays close and energy stays high, which is what the two want.
“The goal of the point system is to keep it close between teams. Otherwise, if you go into the last week and you already have a team that’s out by like 200 points and they obviously already won, there’s no energy around that,” said Shapkota.
Junior Anshul Bihani has expressed his support and enthusiasm for SAFFY, seeing it as a way to play the sports he loves again in a more competitive atmosphere.
“It’s just a lot of fun to get to play with your friends,” said Bihani. “You know, we’ve all played drive-in basketball, football in the street and stuff, so it’s just kind of fun to take those teams and actually play against some other team and have a good time.”
Even after this season makes its way to an end, Glasgow and Shapkota plan to keep SAFFY growing even after they are gone.
“We know who to talk to, where to go,” said Glasgow. “If we wanna have fun, we’re gonna keep on expanding. It’s awesome.”
With the roots down and no limit on what to explore, Glasgow and Shapkota have created a new Millard North tradition. Every year it gives everyone a chance to shine, and, for just a moment, a little time to relive the sports they love and play the sports they love to play in once again.