By Carol Lei
Friday night lights are to football as quad games are to basketball. During quad games, all four teams of basketball — girls and boys junior varsity and varsity teams — play back to back games starting after school until about 9 p.m. According to girls varsity basketball coach and English teacher Sara Borelli, quad games were designed to hopefully boost spirit and attendance to the basketball games and to bring the crowd to cheer for all four teams, not just the most popular, boys varsity.
Though quad games are hyped up now, they were not consistently around. When quad games were not part of the league schedules for teams, the basketball season was organized in a way where the girls and boys schedules switched every year between playing on Tuesday and Thursday, and Wednesday and Friday. But just a few years ago, during the preleague meeting with all of the coaches from the Santa Clara Athletes league, a vote was held to bring quad games back. Since then, every Friday during the basketball season has become a quad day.
In the scheduling of quad games, the basketball teams have struggled with the order in which the girls and boys teams play. There was a request made to allow the girls JV to play after the boys JV as the girls team was consistently missing both their 6th and 7th period classes. The change was made and the order of play swapped every year: boys JV played first one year and the girls JV first the next.
A few years ago, the same was attempted with the varsity teams, flip-flopping the girls and the boys. However, the result was very disappointing for the girls varsity teams when they played last, after the boys varsity team. Whenever the boys game ended, there was always a mass group of audience members exiting, leaving the girls with near empty bleachers.
This year, the quad games are every Friday starting with the girls JV game at 3:15 p.m., and ending at night with the boys varsity game at 7:45 p.m. During halftime, Bull Spirit holds the half court shot for a fifty dollar gift cards. The bleachers are often packed with fans from both competing schools; quad games have successfully brought the school’s attention to basketball.