For years, student-athletes have alleged the football program receives preferential perks (in the form of bands, racks, Gs, etc.), although the program, and Lakeside athletics, maintain the rumors are “unfounded” and “completely false.”
However, after “Tatler” writers Reagan R. ’25, Rohan D. ’25, and Minoo J. ’24 published their article on Lakeside’s Endowment in the March Issue, anonymous sources told “Tatler” that the article was missing some part of the larger picture, but that “the information we are speaking of will put you in imminent danger … this is a rabbit hole you do not want to fall through.”
What anonymous sources revealed was the existence of a secret fund in the endowment, funded by anonymous donors. Financial documents show the money from this fund was recently used to purchase new football helmets with built-in Apple Vision Pro headsets.
But the spending doesn’t stop there: invoices show the purchase of Snapchat Plus subscriptions for the entire roster and team bonding trips to Turks and Caicos and the Cayman Islands (as one player puts it, “We got motion”), while checks showed an annual donation to the WIAA, just in time for the announcement of the 3A Academic State Champions.
When asked about the purchases, insiders in the football program commented, “Around 2020, 2021, the football program received some crypto. We cashed it out (shoutout Coinbase) and had a little spending money. Or hella spending money. But that’s it.”
Despite this, the Lakeside mascot reached out for a meeting with “Tatler” in the gender-neutral locker room. Hiding in one of the stalls, the school’s beloved mascot detailed illegal schemes authorized by the mysterious anonymous donors (using the seemingly foreign pseudonym assemblyyay ommitteecay).
The mascot revealed the AMC 8 and AMC 10 tests were simply facades for the football team’s secret test to find accountants for its offshore banking, also explaining the trips to the Cayman Islands.
Before the lion left, they revealed to “Tatler” reporters that one of the senior bricks was loose. When pressed, the brick wall revealed a passageway leading to a damp and dungeon-like room. In it, former winners of the Assembly Committee (aka assemblyyay ommitteecay) picker wheel were overseeing middle schoolers while they diligently crunched numbers on the funds the football team was holding in their offshore accounts.
As one reporter commented after the reveal, “The sight of those middle school students was devastating… Even worse is Lakeside’s own football team, loved by everyone and definitely never hated on, being caught up in mischief of this magnitude.” Students were less surprised by the Assembly Committee’s role in the scheme, which has been rumored to be a secret society conducting humiliation rituals since the debut of the picker wheel in September.
However, shocking details emerged from the scene of the crime. When interviewing middle school students forced to labor for the football program, “Tatler” staff found they had horrifying amounts of brain rot. After being asked what had happened to them, one of the 8th graders mumbled something about mogging and the new season of Fortnite. Another asked if interviewers could play some “sigmamaxxing TikTok phonk.”
Reports came out that these middle schoolers have been forced to watch Subway Surfers and Minecraft Parkour gameplay while listening to stories from Reddit’s AITA forum. Lakeside has pledged rehabilitation for the middle schoolers, saying, “We’re focused on emphasizing the importance of touching grass and reconnecting with nature, in the wake of such a traumatic event.”
In the aftermath, the Assembly Committee has been indefinitely embargoed by JC, and the picker wheel has been shelved. Students have expressed relief at the news, commenting, “Not that I would ever think of skipping assembly, but now I have one less thing to worry about… I mean, being picked to receive the Lakeside ‘swag’ has been stressing me out.”
As for the football program, their assets were seized, and their offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands were frozen as federal investigations continue. To fund the upcoming season (and to pay off their Apple Vision Pro helmets), players are floating the idea of signing NIL deals after attending a webinar held by University of Colorado Boulder Coach Deion “Prime Time” Sanders.
And if that doesn’t work, one player tells “Tatler” that they’ve “always really admired the Girl Scout troop grind. Moving in silence, hustling, bringing in hella cash… maybe selling Thin Mints will be our next steps.”
