Trapped inside a garbage can for 30 minutes, Gavin Valli ’23 patiently waited for his target victim to take out the trash.
He hears footsteps; the lid is opened, and he pops up and shoots his target right in the chest.
This is what it took to get an elimination in this year’s Buffalo High School 2023 Nerf War.
Valli was a part of the team “Nerfers in Paris. “They led all teams in eliminations with 29 kills throughout the competition, Valli having 11 of them. Valli’s team finished off the victory yesterday night, beating out 40 other teams.
“After that first elimination, we just got a taste for blood and the frenzy started there, “ said Valli. “ We will win this whole thing, no doubt about it. Lock it in“ .
Valli and his teammates, seniors Karson Peters, Sam Kugler, Colin Field, Max Zook, and Lex Pregchaus, were extremely confident in their ability to take home the title. This did not mean that they were shoe-in winners though; many things could’ve still gone wrong and gotten them eliminated.
Peters is tied with his teammate Valli for eliminations with 11. He knew the risks of becoming a high profile target, and had to watch his back through it all
“You have to break some truces if you want to survive, you can’t trust anybody,” said Peters.
He broke multiple “truces” to get eliminations, including an elimination that consisted of him jumping off a boat to hit his opponent in mid-air on a wakeboard. Some may say that it seems cheap or petty, but when there was a $1,000 cash prize, the Nerfers in Paris were willing to do anything.
“Sometimes you have to risk being eliminated to get an elimination,“ said Peters.
Just a week ago, he was victorious in a “Shoot Off “with Nathan Tromm ’23. It was by far the closest Peters had been to being eliminated. “At this point, it’s more than a game; we have fought too hard to lose. “
Other teams knew just how big of a threat the Nerfers in Paris were. The last remaining team consisted of Eli Tiernan, Sam Schaeffer, and Max Barton, and they didn’t go down without a fight.
“I camped outside their houses multiple times,“ said Grady Guida ‘24. “My team was forming alliances to try and take them down.
But with the onslaught of eliminations and Nerfers in Paris’ wildly aggressive tactics, time ran out to stop the Nerfers in Paris.
