Jessi Johnson

Unfortunately, someone has yet to create a nationally-recognized sport that combines water balloon tossing and dodge ball. In the meantime, however, UT students were able to do the next best thing and play the games separately last Saturday as ResLife hosted UT’s first Field Day.

Healthy competition made for fun times in games like the aforementioned water balloon tosses and dodge ball, but events also included an apple hunt, three-legged races and kickball. Each time a student participated in an event, he or she received a ticket entering them into the raffle to win an iPod Nano. ResLife rewarded the winners of each individual game with a $5 gift certificate to the school bookstore. Heather Dooley and Mike Aarts both won a Nano at the end of the day. With about 30 people in attendance, the games were competitive and high spirited.

“I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would,” mused Shannon Plush, an enthusiastic participant. “I just wanted to win the Nano, but I had a lot of fun.”

Primarily coordinated by Austin Resident Assistants, planning for the event began in January.

“We were playing volleyball one day,” said Jessica Josefczyk, an RA in Austin, “and we thought it would be fun to create an entire day of games for the campus.” The coordinators experienced a few setbacks, as the original name for the day, UT Olympics, had to be cut because of copyright laws.

The original plans also included “super-sized bobbing for apples,” which entailed participants get down on their hands and knees to bob for apples in a giant kiddie pool. To the coordinators’ dismay, the pool had two leaks and would not cooperate with plugging attempts. The event was replaced with the apple hunt, in which apples were hidden among a section of the courtyard. Whoever gathered the most apples in 30 seconds in their ResLife-supplied bucket won the round.

To many students’ surprise, ResLife replaced the usual fatty foods supplied by organizations with vegetable and fruit trays, sandwiches, granola bars, water and Gatorade.

Some students passing by stated they were confused about the event because of the change in name. “I think that we had a really good turnout for a Saturday afternoon,” stated Josefczyk.