Olympics XLI (41) is coming this Friday and with it, a host of fun and entertaining events for students to participate in and win big for their respective grades. With over 130 events in the 2020 Rulebook, it’s almost guaranteed that there’s something for someone. Olympic events are sorted into five categories—Pre-events, Play, Fun, Academic, and Open. Now, typing this out actually makes me quite curious. Are ‘Fun’ events the only ones that are fun? Does that mean the rest of them aren’t? Have you ever heard of Hungry Human Hippos? Kakuro? What about Catch Phrase? Here, we’re going to explore these Olympic events and more, as well as listen to input from THS students and staff.

The 2020 Olympics rulebook officially lists 134 events for students of all skills and interests to participate in. With such a vast selection of events, there is surely something for everyone, right? Mr. Graziano, Tenafly High School’s Digital Art teacher comments, “Well, hopefully everyone finds something fun. You choose the ones that you like to do. Some people have more fun doing architectural design (Straw Architecture)  than say, shooting a hoop.” (3v3 Basketball, Knockout). While that’s all well and good, some students, such as Henry You (‘23) have noted that they, “went to look at the list” and “[weren’t] on it.” Something new that class officers have done this year was sending out a Google survey form with an addendum to notify officers if you did not intend to stay for the entire duration of Olympics, or if you did not plan on showing up at all. Although likely not the case with You, who is eager to attend his first Olympics at Tenafly High, it is certainly odd that he was not added to the roster for his class. Perhaps internal errors have occurred with changes made this year.

Mrs. Haggerty, an Olympic Committee advisor for this year, talked to us about some of the motivations behind creating the event list for this year. “We always look at what the students’ interests are,” she said. “Any events and activities that they don’t like or that haven’t had as good representation we try to replace with something new and more exciting, because our main focus is to get the student body interested.”

Now, I’d like to add that one of my personal all-time favorite Olympic events has not made it to the final list this year: The Tic-Tac-Toe Relay. Even though I had no clue what the Tic-Tac-Toe relay would entail my Freshman year, I can say that I had a blast doing it and was looking forward to seeing it again this year as a main event. Farewell, Tic-Tac-Toe Relay. Sadly, your time has come to pass.

We also asked Freshmen about how much they knew about the events they got, and their expectations for them as well. “I got academic pentathlon, which I did not know existed, and I got Kahoot, which everybody knows,” said Brandon Gao (‘23). As for how fun they would be, Gao replied, “Maybe. I don’t know about the pentathlon because of seniors, obviously, or any upperclassmen, really, would have an advantage, but Kahoot I find to be pretty chill.”

Some other THS students talked about their experiences with Olympic events in previous years. In talking about Pie Eating, one of the main events of Olympics, Keren Gross (’21) remarked, “I guess you don’t usually shove your face in a pile of pudding with whipped cream on top. It’s kind of gross (no pun intended), but I found out that I was surprisingly good at it and I found it to be fun.”

Olympics is always a fun time at THS and all students are encouraged to come out and try to win big for their respective classes. The 2020 Olympic rulebook can be found here.