CAC Student-Athlete Olympics

By Nick Bravos

Sports Editor

For the second time, Saint Mary’s University held the Cardinal Student-Athlete Olympics on Sunday, Jan. 22, to create a better sense of community between SMU athletes.

Run by the Cardinal Athletic Council (CAC), a group comprised of student-athlete representatives from each varsity sport, the Olympics was an event where all Cardinal student-athletes went head-to-head against each other in a three-hour, nine-station competition.

Junior CAC members Paige Carter and Hayley Ohl selected student-athletes from each varsity sport and divided them up into 16 co-ed teams. “Most teams did not have doubles of the same sport,” said senior and CAC Vice President Bobby Gas. “So, technically, a men's soccer player could be with a women's basketball player, men's hockey player, and a women's tennis player.”

The nine stations making up the Olympics were communicative-based games that focus on utilizing teamwork, such as, speed bag-toss for eight minutes (most points wins), hockey puck find in the pool (teammates would help direct from the balcony above), handball, blind dodge ball and human battleship.

“No athlete there wanted to lose, especially to one another, so people definitely got into it,” said Gas. “But, I’d say team handball was probably one of the most intense games that people got into. After people left that station they were dripping sweat.”

The two teams that achieved the highest sum of points from victories would go to war, literally, in a culminating tug-of-war event.

“We won’t do [the Olympics] every year,” said Head Hockey Coach and CAC Co-Advisor Bill Moore. “We try to come up with other ways to establish the same sense of community and communication; we want things to stay fresh.” The last Olympics occurred four years ago.

In years to come, though, events may change based on a four year cycle, according to Moore. “Year one would have games that would be different from the others, and after the fourth year we’d start over.”