This year, the Hogs won Selma High School’s Turkey Bowl Tournament. The Turkey Bowl is a flag football tournament held during lunch on the JV practice field, and is hosted by Selma High’s leadership athletics committee. It’s an annual event that occurs in mid-November, just before fall break. The event can last up to a week, but this year it took place within four days: November 17th through the 21st. Leadership student Mariah Flores helped run the event.
“We do the Turkey Bowl because we know there’s students who enjoy participating in it,” Mariah explained.
Students sign up in teams a week before the games begin, selecting their members as well as their team’s name. The teams that signed up this year include: T-Mode, 559, 2Slumped, Joes’s Franks, Guidz, the Hogs, and the Donks.
The Turkey Bowl is run using a brackets system; each team’s opponent is selected by random for the first match, and whoever takes the victory moves on to the next round, where the cycle will repeat until there is one single triumphant team remaining. Due to the harsh weather, the match on Thursday, November 20th was postponed. Despite this setback, players were able to persist and come back the following day, confident and ready to play.
The first round held three matches: T-Mode against 559, 2Slumped against Joes’s Franks, and Guidz against the Donks. T-Mode and 559 had concluded their game with a tie. The two other champions of the first round included 2Slumped and the Donks. The second round held the tie-breaking game between T-Mode and 559, revealing T-Mode as victorious. It also included a game between the Donks and the Hogs, where the Hogs stole the win and continued into the next round. In the third round, the Hogs won against 2Slumped, where they continued to the final round, T-Mode against the Hogs. The Hogs dominated over T-Mode, becoming the champions of the Turkey Bowl.
17-year-old Juan Cisneros is a senior who participated in the Turkey Bowl and was part of the team “2Slumped.” He signed up because he wanted to make the most of his final year of high school, taking every opportunity to participate in activities the school offers. Juan has been playing football for eight years, first getting into pads in fifth grade, and continuing on to play at the high school level at Selma High. For Juan, the Turkey Bowl was a blast.
“[It was] very fun and a great way to play football one more time,” said Cisneros. After winning the Valley Championship during the 2024-2025 school year, he was disappointed with the short-lived season this school year. In the Turkey Bowl, Juan and his team successfully made it into the semi-finals, but came up short of overpowering their opponents. He wanted to thank his fellow teammates, as well as friends for their contribution in his fun experience playing in the Turkey Bowl.
“Noah Garcia, Joe, Nathaniel Ramirez, and Bryan Mendez were the best teammates I could have,” Juan stated.
Juan finishes by giving advice,
“I encourage everyone to participate in trying something new,” he concluded.
