On Friday, April 1, the second annual Ridge Games, organized by Student Council, proved to be a fun, challenging, and late night for everyone participating in the event, which went from 6 pm to 2 am at Fossil Ridge High School. A take on the New York Times bestselling book series The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the Ridge Games feature fifty “tributes”, twenty-five teams, and six events with challenges ranging from random trivia facts, brain games, (word for athletic things), all of which involved racing against the other teams to see who would come out on top. With five teams from each grade level plus an additional five teams, juniors Evan Bergerson and Thomas Ross ended up champions.
Each event involved an “Ultimate Goal” given to the tributes by STUCO members. The goal of the first event was to gather three pictures of characters from The Hunger Games. Contestants played five different games, including one where they had to solve a crossword puzzle, pick up M&Ms with a straw, and go through a ping-pong obstacle course. One of the hardest parts of this challenge was that teams could choose which game they played first, and they did not know where they would receive the pictures. No team was eliminated after the first round, but those who finished quickly had more time to rest and gained more confidence than the teams who struggled from the start.
Event 2 brought more excitement, along with nerves. As the ultimate goal was to receive as many points as possible, the ten teams with the lowest number of points by the end of the hour had to leave. To gain points, teams needed to answer random facts about specific countries. Facts such as, “The paperclip was invented in this country,” stumped some teams too many times for them to get enough points, considering the number of points won decreased after each incorrect guess. Haleigh Copeland, a sophomore, said that, “Some of the questions were really difficult, as well as having to find the country you were trying to guess.” After a team correctly answered seven facts, they could complete a challenge. Challenges ranged from guessing a spice to replicating a bracelet to matching a national anthem to its country. To add to the difficulty, teams had to be tied together with a bandana and would be eliminated if they removed it to try to divide and conquer. “It was fun being able to run around the school and get really involved in the challenge,” Copeland thought.
With buckets of water spread out on the commons floor, the third event proved to be the most dangerous. It started with a challenge where one member of a team had to carry a cup in their mouth, walk a designated distance, fill the cup with water from a recycle bin, and walk back to where their partner was standing to fill another bin with water to a specific line. STUCO members required the participants to wear helmets, and if they did anything but walk, they would be disqualified. In an unfortunate turn of events, one team knocked over their bucket close to the finish and had to wait for the water to be mopped up until they could continue.
After completing the water bucket challenge, contestants got a bag containing symbols and a clue to assist in achieving the ultimate goal of putting together a flag from a country and identifying the country. A piece of each team’s flag was hidden in a PE locker, and the teams had to solve a clue to find the locker and get its combination. The final challenge was to assemble the flag and figure out its country from a set of clues with out-of-order words. Five teams who could not put their flag together fast enough left the competition.
Aligning with the survival theme of The Hunger Games, the fourth event consisted of an island survival challenge. Tributes randomly selected their own “island” in the gym, where they would have to acquire five items to survive and experience different natural disasters. Each team had a different method of travel that they could use to get of their island, including crab walking, baby crawling, and log rolling. To acquire their survival items, tributes needed to guess ingredients in a smoothie, make a shirt, and cross a slackline. “I thought sewing a shirt was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Bergerson. Every time there was a natural disaster and there was not a tribute on their island, STUCO members took away any items they previously acquired and their method of travel changed. Five teams went home after this round.
Only five teams remained for the second-to-last event. As more student left the building and the games went into the night, everyone could feel the changing atmosphere. “It’s different because you’re not competing with a whole bunch of people, but it’s more individual because so many people left,” Sophomore Hannah Brown commented. Tributes chose their own challenges revolving around a multitude of skills, and after completing a challenge, they received a wooden block. Challenges included mental puzzles, performing a choreographed dance, and a shuttle run. After completing the shuttle run, Bergerson stated, “There’s been a lot of running tonight; I’m probably an eight on the one to ten scale of being tired.” At the end of the hour, contestants had ten minutes to build a tower using their blocks, and the two teams with the highest tower that stood for a full ten seconds moved on to the final.
Seniors Nick Girardi and David Kravec, dubbed the “Cutoff Crew”, faced off against the “Pink Prancers,” juniors Bergerson and Ross in the final round. Locked in conferences rooms until they could find and answer a riddle or until the other team won, the sixth event proved to be the biggest mental challenge. Both rooms had clues placed all over, some of which mattered, though many were plain nonsense. With a map projected on the white board, book strewn about the room, and old newspaper clippings taped to the walls, the escape room proved to stump both teams at the beginning. In order to find the riddle they had to answer, the teams needed to find clues in the books that led them to three different countries on the map; the countries on the map corresponded with a number that opened a lock box containing the riddle. To leave the room, the tributes needed to know the year Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, which could be found on one of the newspaper clippings on the wall.
It only took Bergerson and Ross a little over twenty minutes to solve the riddle, though they had to wait five minutes before any member of STUCO would make the announcement because they asked for one hint. Bergerson claimed, “It was a little weird, you didn’t really know what was going on at first. Until you got your first clue, it felt like national treasure.” Ross added, “There was just stuff lying around and you’d have to figure it out, which was ridiculous.” Despite the incredulousness of the last task, Ross says, “We will definitely do it again next year.”
Even though many tributes were wrought with despair and disappointment after their elimination, most enjoyed the Ridge Games all the same. “My favorite thing was how friendly everybody else was. Other teams were helping other teams and it made it that much more enjoyable,” Copeland, who was eliminated after the second round, said. Chase Elliot, a sophomore eliminated after the third round, said, “I’d like to put our names in for next year, if that works out.” Ross and Bergerson felt triumph after their win, and Ross stated that, “Lots of people were talking smack about us most of the day, so to show them all that we won, it’s going to be a good night for us.”
With the success of the second annual Ridge Games, there will surely be another next school year. Tell us what you liked about this year’s and what you want to see in future in the comments below.
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