Senior Assassin is a student-run elimination game that has become increasingly popular over the years. The game is structured around the Splashin app, which allows one person to start a game that other students pay to join. After joining, students are assigned a target and are given a certain amount of time to eliminate their target by shooting them with a water gun. To avoid being eliminated, students can wear goggles or a water arm floaty, which acts as a protective device. This game has become a tradition for high school seniors at Liberty; however, the 2026 game has caused some controversy.
Makaya Beachy, 12, said the conflict began before the game had even started, when the game administrators were accused of stealing a portion of the prize money.
“Everybody just paid in $15 to the Venmo, and then when it all started to go bad was…the night that it started…they posted on Instagram the winning pot and there was $300 missing,” Beachy said. “It was just a whole mess, but then they ended up giving back the $300 to the prize pot, and then [the game] started, and it was fine for like a week after that.”
Bryant Walker, one of the three administrators running the 2026 game, owns up to trying to take some of the prize money.
“Yes, me and Denton Loper…we planned on taking 50 each because, this is a hard job… then everybody crashed out, and we were like ‘you know what, I’ll do it for free,” Walker said.
Following this incident, the administrators joined the game themselves, which brought along a plethora of new problems.
“In the app, admin can see who everybody’s target is. They can switch everybody’s target, and they can see everybody’s location, so as the game kept going on, people started realizing that they were looking and changing people’s [targets],” Beachy said. “An example was, for me…I had a certain person, and then two hours later it switched, and then I ended up having an admin [as my target], and somebody else switched from the admin [as their target] to the person that I had, so they were manually switching people.”
Walker and Hassan Farah, 12, another administrator, both deny manually switching targets, claiming they didn’t even know that it was possible to do so. Walker argues that under certain circumstances, a player could have more than one target at one time, which may have led others to think that the administrators had manually switched targets.
“Once you switch someone’s target, you’ll have two targets, right? Because you have your old target and your new target…while the game is switching, you have two targets,” Walker said.
Even without the issues involving administrators, there were many other hiccups with the game. People were willing to go to great lengths to win, with one participant even going so far as to trap another player in their garage.
“It was on Purge Day, and…the person was in the car, and parked in the garage, closed the garage door, but the person rolled under the garage door while it was closing. So then they were closed in there, and then they got the person out in the garage, which is technically trespassing, but then the person they got out was mad, and wanted him to delete the video, so [they] kept him in the garage for over an hour,” Beachy said.
The 2026 game ultimately came to an end after an issue arose with the placement of “revives,” which offered a way for eliminated participants to re-enter the competition.
“There was a revive that was dropped in the middle of the Coralville Reservoir, and then there was one that was dropped in [a player’s] house. Obviously, the one that was in [the] house was picked up right away, which means that the admin dropped it there for him to pick up,” Beachy said. “[Another player] swam out to the middle of the lake to get the other one, so then he was obviously mad, cause he’s like ‘that’s not fair cause I had to do a challenge to get the revive and [the player] just got his cause he did the admin a favor’…and so eventually they just split the winnings [between all of the remaining players].”
Walker and Farah admit to helping the player, but believe the other members of the game were being hypocritical and setting a double standard for admin in terms of their interactions with the players.
“Everybody wanted us to cheat for them, but then they’d call us out in the group chat for cheating,” Walker said.
Much like Liberty’s rocky 2026 experience, many other schools have experienced issues with the game as well.
“There was a guy who was literally arrested, because he had a water gun that looked real,” Beachy said. “I think people going too all out [is an issue]. It’s supposed to be fun, but there’s no need for trespassing or following people around.”
By the end of the game, the friendly competition had turned sour, causing issues throughout the senior class.
“A problem, at least with our school, that I’ve realized the past few years, is [that] having admin seniors who are playing [the game] can’t work…cheating makes it not fun,” Beachy said. “Don’t be salty if you get out. It’s just a game.”
