It was a race against the clock at Community Life’s new Lancer Land scavenger hunt. Students appeared in droves at the Community Life Lounge on Feb. 24 to participate in the staff’s mysterious new scavenger hunt event.
Community Life staff revealed the details of the scavenger hunt to the contestants with a short video. The teams had two hours to complete challenges through the Goosechase app and some timed events that would appear periodically throughout the event. An array of opportunities populated the app, each with varying values and difficulty. The prizes were nothing to scoff at, with a $75 Nike gift card for the first place team and a $25 In-N-Out gift card for second place.
Zech Ziegler, sophomore architecture major and Community Life intern, was surprised students were willing to complete one of the highest point value challenges: to fully submerge themselves in the pools in the Colony Apartment and Point living areas.
“We had about 80 come to the event, and I think about half of those people ended up jumping into a pool, which I thought was funny,” Ziegler said.
According to Marco Rodriguez, senior exercise science major, the potential prizes motivated him to do the more extreme challenges.
“The challenge that stood out to me the most was jumping into both Colony and Point pools,” Rodriguez said. “These stood out to me the most because I didn’t think I would jump into the pools for the scavenger hunt. We jumped into freezing cold water with our normal clothes, which was an awful feeling, but it felt refreshing for the rest of the challenge.”
Many higher point value challenges required teams to collaborate to complete them, including making a human pyramid, racing another team down the Front Lawn, and challenging another team to a dance battle.
Ziegler sought to create an environment where people were having fun instead of being hyper-competitive.
“I call it kingdom competition, which is a different type of competition which is not aggressive towards other people, but it’s more or less a type of competition that grows friendships,” Ziegler said.
Camryn Poffenberger, senior exercise major and Community Life intern, shared how happy she was that students worked together and were kind enough to help others complete challenges.
“My favorite aspect of the scavenger hunt was the collaboration within our teams as different members of our team contributed to the scavenger hunt in different ways,” Rodriguez said. “This overall helped our team gather more points to try and place between first and third place. I also loved the idea that this got me to meet new people on campus and participate in something I have never done before.”
Poffenberger shared that this event was a casual way for people to meet others and enjoy friendly competition over the weekend if they didn’t have previous plans.
“Everyone’s letting their guard down, so I think it was cool to see some people come alone,” Poffenberger said. “I saw all of them laughing and smiling, and everyone seemed like they were having a good time.”
