By Robin Peterson
Continuing a long-standing tradition, on April 22 at 2 p.m., the Wesleyan Activities Council (WAC) will host the annual Mud Games.
Tomorrow, the field adjacent to Village I’s Rose Hall, aptly named Rose Lawn, will turn into a swampy free-for-all.
Billed by student activities as one of Virginia Wesleyan’s most beloved traditions, the Mud Games encourage students to unite and compete against one another in relay-style games.
Each year, WAC recognizes one winning team after the games are over. Competing teams are assembled from sororities, clubs, and friend groups. Mud Games serves as a way to bring the campus community together.
WAC has instated a couple changes to the way Mud Games will be run. In order to adapt to the changing campus grounds, student activities moved the location of the games to Rose Lawn. Due to construction of the new Birdsong Athletic Field and the parking lot behind Village II, the usual field that Mud Games was held in is now unavailable. Therefore, for the first time Mud Games will not be held in its usual field.
In addition to the location change, the games are also taking place at a different time of year. As veterans know, the Mud Games traditionally take place at the end of the fall semester to conclude the year. However, last year the games were cancelled because of severe wind and rain. While rain might sound like a welcome ingredient to the Mud Games, WAC had to cancel as a safety precaution for the students and equipment involved.
To prevent the campus from missing out on a beloved tradition, the games were postponed to this spring in hopes of better weather. While contesters may have the cold to cope with, the games are on. Hopefully the rain won’t cancel them again.
“We’re hoping now that if we get some rain it passes and we’re able to go again,” Director of WAC, Kate Griffin commented.
The freshmen who weren’t able to participate in the games last fall need not worry about missing out on this favorite tradition. Griffin states that this year’s games will be very similar to games in previous years.
“Basically we feel that we have a successful formula and we want to keep that formula,” Griffin said. This means everyone should expect the usual traditional activities.
While the games themselves will mostly remain the same as they have been since the start of the tradition, the biggest goal for the games this year is to keep the momentum going that the games had in the fall.
“We had a very large amount of teams, we had 25 teams in the fall, which is a lot, and we’re just hoping to keep that momentum going,” Griffin said.
As for future years, the fate of Mud Games is up in the air. Depending on the success of Mud Games this semester, they may be permanently established as a spring event.
“We’re trying to find the magic spot for it, there’s a lot going on in September… For the student organizations who are trying to participate it’s hard for them to get prepared for so many different events in a short amount of time. So we’re just trying to evaluate where we had the most potential participation and where there’s the least amount of scheduling conflict,” Griffin said.
