This article was posted with written permission from Victoria Walker, Editor-in-Chief, The Rotunda.
Drop and give me 50! Theta Chi G.I. raises over $1,500 for the USO
By Natalie Joseph/Features writer for The Rotunda
On Thursday, March 19, Theta Chi Fraternity hosted their first annual Theta Chi G.I. Obstacle Course event, which benefited the United Service Organizations (USO).
The USO helps provide support to active soldiers and their families. All the money that the fraternity raised from the event went to care packages for the USO.
After planning the event for over five months, sending out sponsorship packages, getting funds for the event, tabling and preparing obstacles, Thursday was the day where the fraternity got to see all their hard work come together.
Theta Chi chapter president Gibson Hawk said, “It was a really large undertaking and probably the biggest thing this chapter has done.”
The entire event lasted about an hour, starting with registration from 3:30 p.m.-4 p.m.. There were field games, aWMLY DJ and light refreshments for about one hundred and fifty people who came out to watch. By 4:30 p.m. it was time for the main event.
Hawk said, “Once it got going, it was like a well oiled machine.”
The obstacle course started off with ten push ups for each team member, then a tire run, an Army crawl under a net while fraternity brothers shot water guns and a balance beam. Then, the teams had to simulate throwing a grenade by throwing water balloons at the Theta Chi brothers. The final obstacle was to grab a sled that had a brother sitting inside of it, pull it all the way across Iler Field and then sprint back to the finish line.
A total of twelve teams of four to five people participated in the obstacle course, and despite the rain that made it harder for the teams, Alpha Delta Pi came out with the win. Other teams such as Theta Chi new guys 1, 2 and 3, Tri Sigma, Alpha Sigma Tau had two teams, Kappa Delta, Delta Zeta, Zeta Tau Alpha and a team of first year students participated in the event.
Hawk said, “We want to do it bigger and better than this year of course. We want twice as many teams. We also want more outreach to the non-Greek affiliated groups of campus, because the majority of the people who competed were Greek.”
It was a close race, and the winning team got to take home the ultimate American prize box, filled with an American flag, t-shirts, a customized plaque, gift cards, USO/military stickers and a lot more.
After the event was finished, teams who participated got to reverse the roles on the brothers, by making them run through the obstacles while getting to yell and shoot water at them. The average time through the course was a 1:34 seconds, but next year the fraternity would like to get it up to three to four minutes, with more obstacles and less running.
Hawk said, “We want to hopefully add twice as many obstacles for next year to make it more difficult.”
After raising over 1,500 dollars, the fraternity plans to host the event again next year. According to Hawk, some of the new ideas that they want to implement, would be more tires, more mud, tire flips and possibly build a wall to climb over. They also would like to push it back later in the semester in hopes of better weather.
Hawk said, “It required a lot more work than we had originally anticipated, so because of that, we couldn’t do as much. Next year, we have a whole year to plan for it, and we are going to work even harder and make it even bigger.”
Other sponsors for the event were Fish N’ Pig, Buffalo Wild Wings, Red Front and various donations from private parties.
Hawk said, “We want to reach out to more of the small, local business next year. We need to do more community outreach as far as sponsorship goes. We want to give as much money as possible, so that we can give a very noticeable care package. Something that really means a lot.”
Along with this new event, this is a new philanthropy for the fraternity, who is making a national movement to have USO at every single chapter across America.
Sophomore Theta Chi brother Josh Harkema said, “It means a lot to our chapter. We like to pride ourselves on being American and showing youthfulness, so it means a lot that we get to partner with such a great philanthropy such as the USO and give back to our country and the people who are serving for us.”
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