ComedySportz is a high-school competitive improvisation league in the Houston area. Two teams play against each other, with both teams competing for laughs from the audience. On May 3, the citywide championship will be held at Cinco Ranch High School, and Cy Woods will be sending a ComedySportz team. Among the students on the ComedySportz team is freshman Tressel Eckman, who is excited that the team has made it this far.

“It’s kind of a big opportunity,” Eckman said. “ComedySportz hasn’t been at this school in a long time, but then we came back, and now, we’re in the city championship.”

According to Eckman, being in ComedySportz is a full commitment.

“It takes a lot of hard work to be able to come up with characters on the spot and do different things that the coach and the ref may ask you to do,” Eckman said.

At practice, the team tries to make preparing for matches fun.

“One thing we like to do is that we usually get in a circle and just start telling puns,” Eckman said. “It sounds boring, but it’s not because we tell the dumbest jokes, and we always make each other laugh.”

The team has not seen their coach since the last match, but he will be visiting them for the last practice before the city championship to tell them what it is going to be about.

“He’s going to be informing us on what we can do to make sure our scenes are up to quality,” Eckman said.

Eckman’s favorite part of ComedySportz is all of the chances he gets to make new friends.

“We play against a lot of different schools,” Eckman said. “I’ve made friends from Foster High School, from Cy-Fair, everywhere.”

Even though ComedySportz is a big commitment, it is hard to get the whole team in one place for a match.

“Not everybody shows up to all the matches because of different conflicts,” Eckman said. “Most of the kids are in theatre.”

Eckman is also in theater like most of his teammates, even though students do not have to be in theater to join ComedySportz.

“Being in theater helps with being in ComedySportz,” Eckman said. “In theater, you also learn how to create a scene, and you really implement that during scene games in ComedySportz.”

He is confident that he and his teammates will do great at the championship.

“I think we’re all ready,” Eckman said. “We always boost each other up [saying things like] like ‘Hey, man. Good job.’”

He has said that if the school has another ComedySportz team next year, the chances of him joining are 100 percent.

“We’ve had a lot of success this year,” Eckman said. “We have a lot of seniors who are going to be leaving, but we’re going to have a lot of new freshmen coming in and other people like sophomores and juniors who are going to be like ‘You know, I want to try this. It’s fun.’”