Tartan Olympics Recap

Feb. 2

Last weekend the Carnegie Mellon Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) hosted the inaugural Tartan Olympics and it was a huge success. The Tartan Olympics was a project that SAAC has been planning since the fall, and the effort and attention to detail paid off in the end. The goal of the Olympics was to unite the academic and athletic communities through friendly competition.

The planning began with recruitment. The biggest challenge of the whole process was getting the word out and getting campus organizations excited about the event. We ended up recruiting about 20 teams with 10 members, filling the University Center with more than 200 people!

The event kicked off during the varsity basketball games on Friday night with a three-point competition at halftime of the men’s basketball game. On Saturday, all of the planning was put into action as each athletic team hosted an event. The events included: Tug-O-War, Rubik’s cube relay, Tartan Trivia, Scientific Discovery, Spelling Bee, Improv, Karaoke, Splash Competition, Knock-Out, Eating Competition and Dodgeball.

All of the events began to draw a crowd of passers-by, but a couple of events drew most of the attention. Karaoke seemed to be the spectacle of the night, with a close battle between Abusement Park (which consisted of athletics department staff) and NSBE-ians (National Society of Black Engineers). Led by women’s soccer assistant coach Betsy Warren and athletic trainer Steff Westrick, Abusement Park opened with a crowd favorite – Hannah Montana. Their performance took them to the finals where they faced NSBE, but NSBE’s performance of Billie Jean was too tough to beat.

The results came in and the winner of the $500 prize by a small margin was NSBE. We were extremely pleased with the success of the event and we expect to draw even more teams in the future.  We achieved our goal of bringing the various campus communities together and by the end of the night it was tough to distinguish team from team. I look forward to improving this event over the years and increasing the awareness.

Thanks to everyone who participated and helped with the event!

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