By Amanda Nguyen
<[email protected]> 

The ComedySportz team will compete against Guerin on March 6 and April 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theater. According to Michael “Mike” Gospel, team captain and senior, the ComedySportz team, consisting of seniors Gospel, Jon Haslam and Philip “Phil” Kirk, juniors Laura Palmer and Jason Van Houten and sophomore Bethany Arrington, has practiced hard for these matches.

According to sponsor Jim Peterson, Gospel usually runs the practices and leads his fellow team members through exercise and various match games. “We still rehearse Fridays after school. Right now we are running through mock matches. The team has had an exhibition match downtown, so they get a real world experience,” Peterson said.

To get further experience, Gospel said the ComedySportz team went to a professional ComedySportz match to see the real ComedySportz players in action. He said the ComedySportz team also has exhibition matches, which are similar to dress rehearsals that also help train the team members for real matches.

Some games played in the matches are the musical game “Da Doo Run Run,” a gimmick game titled “Hitchhikers,” a scenic game called “Countdown” and a guessing game “5 Things,” according to Gospel. 

Gospel said these games help build quick thinking, improvisation skills, impression skills, rhyming skills, physicality skills, gibberish usage, confidence and teamwork. 

Peterson said matches run in two halves. The first half opens with a head-to-head game, which is where players face off against the other team one-on-one. This game determines who gets control of the match. The team that wins the head-to-head game then challenges the other team to another game. Then, the audience votes on which team is the funniest. This process goes back and forth until halftime. At that point, the team with fewer points plays a bonus game called “5 Things.” The losing team can earn more points by how well they guess what five things the team is doing. After halftime is another head-to-head game, and after a couple of challenge rounds, the votes are tallied. The last game is an individual game in which the teams stand together and make up quick one-line jokes to earn quick points. The team at the end of the match with the most points wins and is awarded the “meaningless trophy.”

Gospel said he prefers matches over practices because it makes him feel better when the audience is there to laugh at the ComedySportz team’s jokes. He first got interested in ComedySportz his freshman year. 

After three years of participating in ComedySportz, Gospel said he still enjoys all of it. “I love the team aspect of ComedySportz. I love performing; it’s addicting. Entertaining people brings me joy. It makes me feel good about myself.” 

SOURCE / MIKE GOSPEL