Photo via SmugMug Galleries
By Katherine Cortese ’21
On September 12th, all students at The Frederick Gunn School, both boarding, day, and even remote, participated in our first Clash of the Cohorts event. This was a spin-off of our usual Clash of the Colors event, in which each grade is assigned a color, making 4 teams out of all of the students.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many events had to be shifted at the beginning of this school year, an adjustment to our class bonding events being one of them. Grades were now split into cohorts, separating the students into 18 teams. The students participated in a number of exciting activities, such as a field goal contest, spoon races, trivia, flag designing, story writing, and movie producing.
When asked about the event, Astrid von Seufert ‘21 from the TPACC Day Student Village, said, “I think the event was successful because it made up for the Clash of the Colors event that we missed last year since everything was online, but I wish we could’ve done it by grade like previous years. I think people got to bond with people in their cohort and it was a lot of fun, but I do miss the grade events.”
When asked about her favorite part of the event, Astrid stated, “I personally enjoyed writing the origin story this year, but my favorite activity to do all together in previous years is definitely creating the dorm flag.” Astrid’s cohort placed 10th out of the top 10 cohorts. Astrid speaks for the day student population who, although they miss events from previous years, are grateful to still have an opportunity to have fun.
James Pattillo ‘21 from Gunn Dorm Cohort 2 enjoyed the experience greatly. He said, “I think the clash of cohorts was very successful this year. I feel that it brought our cohort together, and it made us all very close, and the games that we participated in were very fun.”
James went on to reminisce about the events he missed from previous years. “The thing that I noticed was missing from the event that we had previous years was the pie eating contest. That was my favorite!”. James’ cohort placed 9th out of the top 10 cohorts. “My favorite activity during the clash of cohorts was definitely the field goal competition,” he said. “I’m very excited and hoping we can do more events like this this year.”
Despite the adjustments to a new school event, the students enjoyed the cohort bonding activities and are excited to participate in more fun activities.
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