By Billie Nagy

Oh, Athletic Field Day. A fun and competitive day filled with exciting games, team sportsmanship, and supportive captains, all in the hopes of bringing home the gold. Or, since we’re not Olympic athletes, just claiming ourselves the champions until it rolls around next year. Occasionally, one game will be finished early, so the two teams at that event have a chance to do smaller competitions, just for fun.

This is exactly what occurred with my team New Zealand and team Jamaica at tug-of-war. We had finished our initial rounds early, so we decided to have a couple individual match-ups and girls-against-boys contests. Up first, we had all of the girls on one side and all of the boys on the other. The first round, we were victorious, but the boys wanted a rematch. We decided not to play fair and had a trick up our sleeves. The girls decided that we should pull as hard as we could for three seconds after the teachers signaled the game to begin, and then let go of the rope, sending the boys tumbling downward like a line of dominos.

Let’s just say we are grateful that the boys were good sports afterwards. After all of the laughs, the horn was sounded and we were off to our next game.

Of course, my individual Athletic Field Day memories were just a few of the many fun experiences that day. All throughout the morning you could see kids competing hard no matter the score, providing a much-needed break from the TPA classroom.