Physics teacher Lyle Brennan stands behind his podium on the stage in the auditorium when, out of nowhere, a tennis ball comes zooming toward him.

Thinking it was one of his students, Brennan begins yelling. Little did he know that the culprits were none other than Vice Principal Gary Scholl, who was Dean of Students at the time and former assistant Dean of Students Boo Smith. As he continues to yell, a few more tennis balls fly toward him. Realizing too late that the balls were not coming from his students, a shower of tennis balls quickly came pelting down at him.

Trying to escape the shower of tennis balls coming from the catwalk, Brennan angrily runs up to the catwalk just in time to miss Scholl and Smith shimmying down the fire escape ropes.

Before making a run for it, Scholl and Smith peeked their heads out from behind the curtains revealing themselves to the students.

Scholl describes this prank, which took place during the early 1990’s, the “all-time best prank in school history.”

Scholl’s practical jokes did not stop there. Early one morning before school started, Scholl, along with former swim coach Al Herlinger, decided that it would be funny to switch the desk drawers of the teachers who always kept their desk organized, with drawers of teachers who were very unorganized.

Scholl and Herlinger went into the academic wing and switched all of the desk drawers. As the teachers came into their rooms and got ready for homeroom, they began to realize that the drawer in their desk did not belong to them. The teachers started yelling across the hall seeing if anyone had their drawer.

In more recent years, Scholl has gotten back in touch with his practical jokester side. In 2010, Mr. Scholl decided it would be fun to steal social studies teacher Jake Hollin’s advisory Christmas tree and hide it in the third floor faculty bathroom.

The Christmas tree was quickly found and placed back in Hollin’s room, but not for long. Scholl took it yet again, this time placing it in the school courtyard while the students and faculty were at an assembly.

Hollin put the tree back in his classroom, but again, it did not stay. Scholl took the tree for a third and final time and hid it in the Brown room closet.

After the many shenanigans with the Christmas tree that occurred in 2010, social studies teachers Rodney Johnson and Anthony Del Puppo decided they would try the Christmas tree prank the next year in 2011.

“Hollin is a try hard, he makes us look bad. We gave him comeuppance.” Johnson said. This prank resulted in all of Johnson and Del Puppo’s desks being flipped over and put in a pile.

According to Johnson, the prank turned out to be “everything I thought it to be and more, Hollin was so surprised.”

Johnson also pulled a prank on Del Puppo a few years earlier. Johnson gathered all of the desks in Del Puppo’s classroom and placed them on the roof of the school.

“[Del Puppo] called in sick that day, so we had to rush to put back all of the desks for the substitute,” Johnson said.

Scholl attempted a prank on science teacher Tim Perry earlier this year. Scholl asked some of his anthropology students to cut out all of Scholl’s old school pictures from the yearbooks. Once they were finished, Scholl and his students headed over to Perry’s classroom and began to cover the walls with the pictures.

Unfortunately, Perry walked into the classroom as they were covering the walls and they were unable to finish the prank.

“I have a feeling that the pictures will turn up by the end of this year, sometime when I know that Mr. Perry is not in his classroom,” Scholl said.

Teacher pranks don’t stop there, however. While on the March for Life in 2011, music director Marc Bolden and German teacher Ashleigh Stall got to talking and they quickly discovered that the colleges they attended were basketball rivals.

Bolden attended University of Dayton and Stall attended Xavier University. In light of this rivalry, Bolden and Stall, along with some of their students, began making plans for pranks.

Bolden began the war by covering all of Stall’s desks with Dayton colors, red and blue, tablecloths and blowing up red and blue balloons that completely covered her floor. Their pranks went back and forth until basketball season ended.

In addition to pranks on teachers by other teachers, students have also enjoyed pranking their teachers.

It wasn’t unusual for former music director Dan Briggs to walk into the Chorus room to find that his seniors had pranked him again. The chorus room has been completely covered in pictures of cats, and sticky notes, among other things. The seniors in the class of 2010 got into the chorus room after Briggs left for the day and covered the room from ceiling to floor in yarn to the point where walking in the door was impossible. Briggs’ response to this was to get scooters so that he could slide under the yarn to his desk.

The pranks do not stop with tennis balls and Christmas trees. Occasionally, math teacher George Appleby finds his favorite Mr. Potato Head missing.

“One Mr. Potato Head goes missing each year,” Appleby said. This year, though, a crown has gone missing from Appleby’s Mr. Potato Head King. Appleby is “hoping by the end of the year [the crown] will come back.”

One year, Appleby even chased down a student who was attempting to steal one of his Mr. Potato Heads. “There was a student who had been stealing things from faculty members’ rooms, it wasn’t just mine,” Appleby said. The student had on a green one-piece suit and a paper bag with eye-holes covering his head.

“I was teaching class with the door open when he ran in,” Appleby said. The student jumped up to reach a Mr. Potato Head on top of Appleby’s wooden closet and quickly ran out the door, toward the locker rooms.

“I took off after him,” Appleby said. “He begged me not to turn him in. I told him if he gave back all of the missing items I wouldn’t. To this day, I have not divulged his name.”

Scholl feels that pranks are fun “if everyone is in the right humor,” and “most of the time they are.”

 Shannon Olsen is a Lifestyles Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.