Bickering siblings, longtime friends, and star-crossed lovers. Sounds like this year’s edition of Besties Baes and Bros!
Besties Baes and Bros is a yearly fundraiser at Oyster River High School (ORHS) for the junior class. The event is in the form of a newlyweds’ style game show, where each duo is asked questions about one another, to see how well they truly know each other. This year’s edition took place last week and was won by an iconic pair of twins. I wanted to take a deeper look into the interactions between the duos to see if they really knew each other before the competition.
Before the competition, I was curious if any of the duos were practicing, so I interrogated some of them. Alja Forcey-Rodriguez (‘24) and Hayden Spires (‘24), have been preparing for this their whole lives. “If we’re being honest, we’ve been practicing for this ever since the second grade,” said Spires.
“When Hayden decided to be friends with me,” added Forcey-Rodriguez.
“I was like ‘you know what Alja, I’m going to be friends with you just so we can win Besties Baes and Bros,” responded Spires.
Speaking of which, let’s take a look at how the besties did!
Round one was for the besties. Some duos, like Spires and Forcey-Rodriguez, were prepared with costumes. The four pairs of contestants and their final scores were Chloe Hatfield (‘25) and Kiera Elliott (‘25) with four points, Keira Johnson (‘24) and Siri Ventrapragada (‘24) with four points, Spires and Forcey-Rodriguez with five points, and Maggie Fitzhenry (‘24) and Autumn Hoffman (‘24) with six points, making them the winners of the round.
I asked Ventrapragada what superpower Johnson would want, to see if they’d practiced before the event. “[She would] want to… control time?” “I was going to say teleporting places,” responded Johnson. Some duos clearly practiced more than others.
The second round was the baes, ending in a sudden death match between three duos. The round featured Nori Sandin (‘23) and Chris Collins, Elizabeth Walent (‘23) and Mason Tatarian (‘23), Avery Baumgardt (‘26) and Talon Ouellette (‘25), and Harrison Burnham (‘25) and Sadie Mcleod (‘26).
The couples knew each other well and ended the round with a three-way tie of six points. The tie was broken with a quick round where the three couples answered questions until they got one wrong, and Burnham and McLeod won the round.
For the third round, I had confidence in the bros. After all, they’ve known each other for most of their lives. This round featured Hayden (‘23) and Liam (‘24) Meredith, Cam (‘24) and Connor (‘26) Monette, Maeve (‘24) and King (‘26) Hickok, and Maddox (‘24) and Mason (‘24) Smith.
It was a close round, but the Smith twins came out on top with six points. Although Maeve Hickok (‘24) and King Hickok (‘26) stated that “we’d rather get last than second,” they ended up tying the round for second.
Hearing the Hickok siblings’ banter at my questions was pretty fun though. When asked who the favorite child is, King immediately responded, “me!” followed by Maeve’s “King that is such a lie! For a fact it’s me.”
“Nah.”
“King you’re such a disappointment,” joked Maeve
The final round pitted the previous winners of each round, and the final score had Burnham and McLeod in third with four points, Hoffman and Fitzhenry in second with five points, and the Smith twins winning the game with 6 points.
This year’s Besties Baes and Bros was a success, which left pairs wanting to learn more about each other, and audience members thoroughly entertained by the contestants’ quarrels.