The sun was intense, the mud was unforgiving, and the atmosphere was raucous Wednesday afternoon on the fields.  At the end of the day, though, it was the Junior Girls and the Senior Boys that emerged from the competitions victorious.  

The first matchup of the day kicked off at 1:05 P.M. with the Senior girls facing off against the Freshman girls in Tug-of-War.

In a battle that lasted roughly ten seconds, the Seniors pulled away to advance to the championship.

The next matchup featured girls from the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2021.  Within moments, the Junior girls dragged the Sophomores across the fields en route to a swift victory that earned them a date with the Seniors in the Girls’ Tug-of-War championship.

After the opening round of the Girls’ tournament, the Senior boys were set to face off against the upset-minded Freshman boys.  In a matter of seconds, the Class of 2019 was celebrating their third consecutive trip to the Boys’ Tug-of-War championship.

        To that point, the matches had all resulted in the older class winning.  That all changed when the Sophomore Boys stepped up to the rope to take on the Juniors.  In a struggle that lasted well over a minute, the Sophomores, anchored by Harrison Kelly, used multiple momentum surges to shock the Upper School and advance to the championship round.  WordsWorth caught the action from up close.

The upset of the afternoon concluded the first round and the focus shifted to the consolation matches.  The Sophomore girls defeated the Freshman girls as the Junior boys’ bounced back from their earlier loss to salvage 50 points.

With the consolation matches out of the way, the stage was set for the day’s main events: the championship matches.  In the day’s second major upset, the Junior Girls dominated the Senior Girls to earn first place. Regarding the triumph for the Class of 2020, Junior Shelby Deiber said, “We had an amazing victory against the Seniors, which is almost unheard of, and I’m really proud of our success and how much effort we put into tugging [the rope].”

It all came down to the Senior boys to earn the Class of 2019’s first ever victory in Tug-of-War, and they delivered.

Mr. Cotter gave the signal for both sides to begin pulling, and nine seconds later, the Seniors celebrated their victory on the fields before congregating around Jack Stern’s Jeep Wrangler to take pictures.

Regarding the victory, Senior and Tug-of-War team mainstay Jack Stern said, “We did it with ease, but the second that whistle blew and we saw that we had won, it felt like we were on top of the world.”

As for the impact of the atmosphere, Senior and a four-year veteran of the Tug-of-War team Christian Moorhouse said, “Without the hype-up speech from Ollie Frank, the immaculate megaphone work of Jakob Hull, and overall noise created by our grade, it probably would have taken us another two seconds to win.”

The final tally for the day: