THE SUBBIE RETREAT has been a Uni tradition for almost 15 years. It welcomes new students to the school and helps them bond with their classmates in ways they would not be able to in a classroom setting. This year’s retreat was a full day and included activities like running, screaming, and creating chaos.

Aug. 31 was, in essence, a perfect day. The sun was shining, the sky was a bright cerulean, and for the subbies and subbie buddies like me, there was no school.

The obstacle course was one of the highlights of the "Subbie Olympics."
Gargoyle photo (click to enlarge)

The retreat, held at Crystal Lake Park in Urbana, started out with the handing out of T-shirts. I milled around with the Gargoyle camera, but unfortunately, seeing as I did not yet know how to use it, I missed a couple of shots of subbie buddies running after rebellious subbies, trying to get them to put their new shirts on.

After this crazy start to the day, the subbies were divided into their advisory groups and filed into the lake house.

There we played an “icebreaker” game — picture telephone — where you drew pictures on the back of the person in front of you, they would guess what it was, and would do the same for the person in front of them.

Though the game was supposed to help you get to know the people in your group, the only thing I learned about the person sitting in front of me was their name and the color of their T-shirt.

After a couple rounds of this game, most people got bored and simply left the lake house to play outside.

Some of the boys grabbed a soccer ball and proceeded to play an intense game, ending in the soccer ball falling into the lake. I and fellow subbie buddies junior James Smith, sophomore Diana Liu, and senior Eunice How spent the next half hour fishing the ball out.

By that time, the "Subbie Olympics" had started, and you could see people participating in the three-legged race, balloon toss, egg race and obstacle course. Realizing that my group wasn’t at any of these events, I ran over to the lake house and breathlessly asked junior Natsuki Nakamura if she knew where my group was.

She handed me a schedule, and I shot off to the sheet volleyball event, where my group was already figuring out the best strategy to "catch" and "throw" the volleyball with a sheet.

Since working out a strategy was the point of the game, I was happy to see this, and I was even happier to see my group cream the other team, who had no strategy. At this point I was taught how to use the camera, and I left my group again to document the chaos of the Olympics.

Soon it was lunchtime, and everybody was herded back to the lake house where they got their lunches and proceeded to find a table outside with friends.

The aftermath of a game of soccer among the subbie boys. Gargoyle photo (click to enlarge)

Some played games while they ate, others talked about the activities so far and what was going to happen next. A soccer game was started again, this time subbies against subbie buddies.

People who didn’t want to play came and cheered on their favorite teams (mainly the subbies).

It was close, but the subbies ended up beating the older students, who defended themselves by saying that they "didn’t try."

As we walked back to the lake house to get some water, we saw the subbie buddies taking huge bags of candy, graham crackers, frosting, and various other yummy-looking treats outside to the tables. However, this candy was not for immediate consumption — this was for building candy houses.

We were called into our groups again and given everything we would need to build a house. Most people showed huge amounts of restraint, eating only one handful of candy as much as five whole minutes into the activity. Other groups, however, had to ask for extra supplies due to the "mysterious disappearance" of some of the treats.

The end result of this activity was impressive: some resembled castles — tough and imposing; others fell down at the slightest touch. But no matter how good your structure turned out, it took a very long time to get all the marshmallow and frosting goo off your fingers.

As soon as everybody could clap their hands without their fingers sticking together, we were sent over to the field (yet again) for the next big group activity: a game called gold rush.

Gold rush was, to put it simply, chaotic. The point of the game was to find the gold and silver spray-painted rocks and get them to a checkpoint to earn the group's points, without being tagged by the subbie buddies. If you were tagged, you had to give up your "gold." Some people tried surreptiously walking up to the checkpoint, others sprinted their guts out to get their team that extra point.

The game ended slowly — some people didn’t want to stop, others were more than happy to flop down on the grass. We tried playing some smaller group games, but this attempt wasn’t greeted by much enthusiasm, so we skipped to the final event of the day: tug-o-war.

People truly got into the competitive spirit, calling other people weak if their team lost or simply refusing to talk to them if they won. Each advisory group was paired with another, and then winning teams played each other until a final group winner was found.

Then the subbie buddies dared the subbies to a face-off, a proposition that was eagerly accepted. Some subbies watched from the sidelines, wary of the challenge, though most gathered around the rope.

When the game started it seemed certain that the subbies would win — probably because of the sheer numbers on their part. But suddenly, all the subbie buddies let go and everybody on the other side of the rope toppled, creating a domino effect that caused just about everyone in that general area to fall down.

Dusty and generally annoyed, the subbies trooped back to the lake house to grab their lunches and head back home with their parents.

Looking back on the retreat, I have to say it went really well. Sure, it wasn't as organized as it could've been, but you can't do everything as it's planned on paper.

When I was a subbie two years ago, the retreat we went on was only half a day. Though I met a lot of people there, it wasn’t enough time to really find someone, or a group of people, whom I really liked. Even after the retreat it took me awhile to find people whom I felt comfortable around, which wasn’t a good sign seeing as the point of the retreat is to make friends and interact with them.

I hope that this year's subbies enjoyed the full-day experience.

MORE PHOTOS: 2007 SUBBIE RETREAT

Bonding at the Subbie Retreat. Gargoyle photos by Sindha Agha & Katherine Allen (click to enlarge)