006 - NIKKEI SPORTS DAY!

[I know Sports Day was like 3 weeks ago, but don’t worry…the awesomeness that follows is well worth the wait…]

You know those sports movies where the team ends up losing in the championship game, but by overcoming adversity along the way, the losers still feel like winners in the end? This story is kind of like that…but instead of overcoming adversity and shedding a bunch of first-loser tears while the other team hoists the trophy in the background, my team set out to create adversity for everyone else and just declared ourselves the real winners at the end of the day – we even have the trophy to prove it.

First, let’s backtrack a little: it was a sunny Saturday afternoon on March 8^th, 2008, a perfect setting for USC Nikkei’s very first Sports Day. The basic premise of Sports Day was to get into teams and race around campus completing a bunch of different sports-related challenges. On completing a challenge, the team would receive a clue to the next event and so on, with the team finishing first being the winner. Now, the first thing to realize about races like these is that there are always rules (or lack thereof) that you can exploit to your advantage. With that said, Austen, Mika, Ryan, Lance, and I christened ourselves “The Bus Drivers” (because we’ll take you to school…get it? get it?) and set out to win this thing in the most diabolical (read: awesome) manner possible.

Our first event was a basketball challenge at the Cardinal Gardens Apartments basketball court. We sunk shots forward, backward, granny-style, and even from behind the backboard. During the course of the challenge, Josh mentioned that he propped the usually locked Cardinal Gardens door open with a bicycle lock so teams could get inside. We couldn’t let that opportunity pass us by, so the first thing we did on our way out was to remove the bicycle lock and thereby lock out whichever lucky team came behind us.

Penny was in charge of our next challenge, which involved our team shooting darts from a Nerf gun at a target in various ways. I knew about this challenge already, so, being the evil genius I am, I told my team to jack as many of the Nerf darts as possible when we left for the next challenge. With 4 of the 6 darts in our possession, my team grabbed the clue out of Penny’s hands and took off running before she could even realize the greatness that had just taken place.

We were skipping, three-legged racing, crab-walking and wheel-barrowing around the track during the next challenge when I saw Jeni, who was in charge of this station, answer her cell phone and look knowingly in my direction. When she ran over asking me if I knew anything about the 4 missing Nerf darts that were crammed in my pockets, I think I replied “Jeni, I’m kinda busy right now” before skipping away as fast as I could.

The next two challenges were fairly uneventful in the way of rule-bending, although I did have to give up 3 of the darts to get the clue from Jeni that sent us to Jillian’s event. We hula-hooped, did cartwheels, and formed a human pyramid in order to get our second to last clue, which brought us to Mario’s golf challenge. After a few Tiger Woods-esque puts, we were on our way to glory.

Well, we would have been if Missy’s team hadn’t beat us there by literally 10 seconds. We were running to the last station in Topping and saw her team go in the door just in front of us. In addition to the clues we received at the end of each station, we also got a puzzle piece and a song lyric that we had to assemble and sing at the end. When we got into the classroom, Missy’s team had put together their puzzle and was already in the middle of singing their song. We rushed in, put together our puzzle and sang the most bad-ass rendition of Disney’s “Under the Sea” you’ve ever heard, but we were still too late – Missy’s team had already won.

After all that effort we put into sabotaging everyone else, we were still only second place – the first losers. The Bus Drivers (psh, you know you love it) weren’t going to stand around and watch someone else take the trophy we schemed so hard to deserve, so we did what any self-respecting team would do: we made our own. If you’re observant, you’ll have noticed that I said we jacked 4 darts but only returned 3 – so what happened to the last dart you ask? It was branded with “THE BUS DRIVERS: TAKIN’ YOU TO SCHOOL SINCE ‘08” and all of our names.

No doubt about it, Missy’s team was 1st place that day, but it was the Bus Drivers who took home the trophy!

-Craig