As I pulled myself out of bed at the all-too-early hour of 9:30 yesterday morning (c’mon…it WAS a Monday…and my roommates and I were inexplicably glued to the TV for a late-night showing of Titanic on Sunday night…), parts of my arms and back were unusually sore. What could I have possibly done yesterday? I was at the Sun most of Sunday night, but putting out a newspaper doesn’t exactly qualify as strenuous physical activity. After my short term memory stopped failing me, I remembered: Phi-Tug.
Phi-Tug is a philanthropic event put on every year by Phi Kappa Tau fraternity that puts all-male, all-female, and co-ed teams against each other with the ultimate goal of determining a campus tug-of-war champion in each of the three divisions, all while raising money for Hole in the Wall Camps. As a freshman, I had seen the event happening, but this year was my first as an active participant. A bunch of friends from around campus came together to form a team we called “The Humble Tuggers”.
We took on such formidable foes as the choir, a sorority that decided to make a co-ed team, and other random groups from around campus. The all-male and all-female divisions consisted mostly of teams from fraternities and sororities, respectively. One major exception was the hilarious yet intimidating team fielded by the varsity wrestling team, which, not surprisingly, took the trophy in the all-male division. At one point, the six wrestlers even beat a team of twelve guys. I’m glad they weren’t in our division, because we ended up taking the trophy home in the co-ed division. By the end of the competition, the quad was a bit muddier than when we had arrived, but Cornell had determined its 2009-2010 tug-of-war champions. (Our strategy? On the count of three, all pulling together in an attempt to destabilize the opponent; it worked almost every time.)
And so began and ended my career of garnering ‘athletic’ accolades at a Division I school.