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All's fair in Water Wars

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published April 6, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Melissa Lyttle] Team Justice members, from left, Matt Lerom, 18, Joe Payne, 18, Tyler Hamill, 18, Ben Kurth, 18, Eric Solomon, 18, Samuel Brannan, 17 (head peeking out in back), Matt Burton, 18, and Ben Powers, 18, gang up on Zach Williams, 18 (in black shirt) and Taylor Pierce, 17. For two weeks, 290 Plant High School seniors have been engaged in Water Wars, a battle among 29 teams.

Emily Daniels is a cellist in the Plant High School orchestra. Come fall, she'll study art at the University of Central Florida.

Anne Krikorian is a violinist, headed to Swarthmore College to study biomedical engineering.

But in the meantime they are killers.

They conspire to gun down their classmates in Water Wars, an annual senior tradition that takes a squirt gun fight to Tampa streets.

Over the last two weeks, teenagers have been spotted all over South Tampa jumping out of trash cans, setting up predawn stakeouts, burying themselves in bushes, marching down sidewalks armed with day glow water cannons like a gang of street toughs.

The game, which began March 26 and ends at midnight Saturday, splits 290 seniors into teams of 10 with clever names that reflect their makeup.

Team Drama, of course, includes members of the drama team.

OrchDorks - Daniels and Krikorian's team - is for the musically inclined.

And "8 1/2 Girls and an Asian" is self-explanatory, well, somewhat.

Get shot, you're out. Players relinquish their wristbands to their killers. Teams earn points for every hit and lose points for members lost.

Water Wars started four years ago. It's not school sanctioned, so it's fought outside Plant, which bans water guns. The game has its own Facebook page with listed rules. The Web site, a today's generation advancement, helped triple this year's participation compared with last year, organizers said.

The do's and don'ts:

- Use of water guns or balloons only.

- No shooting on school grounds, at school events, at work or in religious services.

- No water guns that look like real guns.

- No shooting once you are eliminated - though you can conspire, distract and do anything else to help teammates.

- No shooting into or out of moving cars. "So no drive-bys," Daniels said.

Still, snipers and reports of teenagers on roofs abound. Krikorian once hid behind a stack of pavers; Daniels behind a hibiscus bush.

The game has resorted to all sorts of cloak and dagger dealings and desperate measures that even forced teens to talk to their elders.

One student was killed coming out of the shower, thanks to an ignorant parent who let in a classmate.

Ever since, teens have put relatives on watch.

Family members now collude in the conspiracies.

The mother of senior class president and co-Water Wars organizer Josh "Presidential Water Master" Albert was suspicious when a reporter asked about her son.

"Are you really a reporter, or someone who wants to squirt him?"

A school e-mail to parents recently encouraged safety during the game and told parents to beware getting caught in the crossfire.

Daniels, 17, works at the Starbucks in Tampa General Hospital and has her mother pick her up at the door, so she won't get picked off while walking through the parking lot. Smelling an ambush, she once drove the family's conversion van, instead of her red Firebird, to trick pursuers.

Her team even uses a mole to infiltrate other teams and ferret out information.

Last week, the OrchDorks learned that 8 1/2 Girls and an Asian planned to stake out Krikorian's house at 6:45 a.m. But weren't they surprised when the orchestra crew flipped the script by waking up even earlier.

The crushing counterattack dissolved a truce Daniels had sewn with a member of the enemy team.

"I had to protect Anne," Daniels explained.

"All is fair in Water Wars," Krikorian, 17, added.

With so much conniving, there's bound to be allegations of corruption. Water Wars co-organizer Matt Burton, a.k.a the "Water Master," handles disputes, which are sometimes posted on the Facebook blog like this one:

Andrea is def not out ... so for all of yall out there who r being dumb and say that she is out yall r retarded/jelous that our team is doing well.

"It's a bunch of high schoolers playing with waterguns," Daniels said. "There's bound to be problems."

Burton, part of Team Justice, listens to both sides before he rules. He said he spends about two hours daily settling disputes and updating scores on the Facebook site.

Burton, himself, died days ago. Someone shot him in the back of the head near Neptune Street outside Moe's Southwest Grill - a major battleground said to be the Gettysburg of Water Wars.

Justin George can be reached at (813) 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.

Water Wars: the breakdown of Team Justice

Samuel Brannan, 17: Killed helping a teammate trapped in the garage. "I was dodging left and right, but there were too many of them."

Ben Powers, 18: Killed trying to catch an enemy water balloon. "Not the smartest thing."

Eric Solomon, 18: "I got killed sneaking up on someone, but he had a better gun."

Zach Williams, 18: Ditto.

Tyler Hamill, 18: Alive at press time earlier this week. His mother would search the perimeter of the house before he got out of the car.

Joe Payne, 18: Alive at press time.

Ben Kurth, 18: Four followed and blocked him in his driveway. After a 35-minute standoff, he got out of his car. "I had stuff to do." He was shot - but not before taking one enemy out.

Taylor Pierce, 17: Successfully shot friend in her room but was killed afterward by someone hiding behind the door.

Matt Burton, 18: Shot in the back of head.

Matt Lerom, 18: Dead. Details unknown.

[Last modified April 5, 2007, 07:51:55]