Photo by Renzo Moran ’24

By Renzo Moran ’24

THE ROUNDUP

Since its first appearance during the COVID-19 pandemic, known then as the Brophy Olympics, the goal of the Team Cup has been to bring the community together. Cut to the present, the team cup has been removed and all but forgotten, which begs the question: what happened?

“Campus is big and it’s only getting bigger,” says Mr. Pete Burr ’07. “I thought by separating groups into eight teams…that it would be a way to shrink the [Brophy] community and build community in ways beyond just grade level, teams or clubs you’re already associated with.”

Student council devised a plan to get students involved in events around campus using a scanner system that would track who came to what event using student IDs. The student council wished that the team cup would use attendance to fuel competition. 

Events like sports games, dances and choir concerts were worth a point denoted by stickers on posters. The hope was that the sticker would attract more students to each event which many don’t go to in their Brophy career. 

“Doer He ’24 and Chris Melchor ’23 spent an obscene amount of time coming up with a full blown scanning system that would take IDs and kick it into an Excel spreadsheet, so we could keep track of where people went,” said Mr. Burr.

Although there were painted signs and lonely scanners waiting for IDs at each event, no one came to scan except for a small number of students, with some events receiving zero scans. 

“Why are we going to put extreme energy into this thing that the student body doesn’t seem to care for,” said Mr. Burr. “The only scans were from kids who were participating in the activity.” 

According to student council members, the decision was made after Hoopcoming to end the program and declare no one a winner deserving of the prize, a day trip to Main Event. 

While the team cup didn’t go as planned, Mr. Burr doesn’t mind that it had to end. “I don’t think there is an issue with acknowledging that it didn’t work. Brophy allows its students and faculty to try different creative things and some happen to stick while others don’t,” said Mr. Burr. “We try to follow the speed of you all.”

With all that said and done, there were still prizes handed out. Multiple teams were given 20% off in the varsity shop for a limited amount of time, with some teams going on multiple stretches at a time with the discount. 

In the end, it came down to the student body and its choice on whether to take the time to scan IDs or go to events.