By Dylan SYLVESTER

The 2016-17 school year at Crescenta Valley High School ended with auditions for the school’s much-lauded Comedy Sportz High School League. This was an opportunity for CV students (as well as incoming students) to demonstrate their comedy chops onstage for a shot at getting on the team.

Comedy Sportz is an after-school improv club that teaches team members the ins-and-outs of performing improvisational comedy. The teams then face off against other schools to see who can score the most points in a medley of improv games performed in front of an audience. The teams get together and practice the basics of improv, such as the who, what, and where of a scene, as well as becoming accustomed to embodying characters that are completely different from themselves. Once the teams get onstage, though, the games are dictated by suggestions from the audience and the players have to think on their feet to keep the game rolling.

But audience members have laugh-out-loud fun watching the players get themselves into all sorts of situations onstage, while the players also get to have fun.

Trevor Hall was an incoming freshman from Rosemont Middle School who hoped to earn a spot on the team.

“It’s fun to pretend to be someone else up onstage,” he said. “It’s great to take an idea for a scene and make it your own.”

Gavin Hall is a teacher at Crescenta Valley High School as well the school’s Comedy Sportz coach and coordinator.

“It’s important to have a community activity that promotes critical thinking in the lives of high school students,” he said of Comedy Sportz.

Zach Cicciarelli, or, as the team calls him, “Snappy Zach,” is a veteran on the team and was last season’s team manager.

“When you’re onstage, you’re a team,” he said of being a member of Comedy Sportz. “The team’s job is to make sure that they have everyone’s back on the team and make each other look like rock stars.”

The players’ commitment to the game and to supporting each other onstage creates an atmosphere of a second family for team members – a second family whose members strive to support each other and, above all, make people laugh.

The first match is Friday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium located in the 4400 block of Ramsdell Avenue in La Crescenta.

  DYLAN SYLVESTER