The sounds of soccer balls slamming the crossbar, tennis balls bouncing back and forth over the net and water splashing from cherubs jumping off the high dive echoed through the Henry Crown Sports Pavillion. For one night, cherubs took a break from Fisk 217 lectures to come together through the competitiveness of sports.
Cherubs took over the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion on July 11 for Fun Night, an event where students could use the various facilities the state-of-the-art sports complex has to offer, including a futsal court and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The program rented out the entire complex for the night to let cherubs go loose and have unstructured time with their friends, community and academic associate Sami McKenney said.
CAA Taariq Ahmed organized 20 cherubs for a 5-on-5 futsal tournament. Futsal is similar to soccer except it is played in a smaller concrete court where players can bounce the ball along the walls.
Every team played one match against each other in the group stage before playing in either the finals or a third place game.
“Everybody really got into it,” Charlie Edwards of Evanston said. “I scored three goals, which was the most in the tournament. My team finished third, which is a bit unfortunate, but it was a lot of fun.”
Jonathan Traub of Brookline, Massachusetts was part of the red team, which won the tournament.
“I felt like I was a bird in heaven, and I was looking down on all my servants,” Traub said. “We were like 20 birds in one flock. Our persistence was incredible, and I’ll never forget that moment.”
On the other side of the tournament, Kaelan Patel of Princeton, New Jersey, was part of the black team, which finished last. His teammate Sascha Keller of Chicago said that while the rest of the team played their hearts out, Patel missed eight shots. For his mistakes, Patel’s teammates took him to the pool and pushed him off the high dive, Keller said.
“I ended up getting thrown in the pool by my team with my socks and shoes still on,” Patel said. “It was quite disappointing, but I respect it. I missed eight shots and that’s inexcusable. If one of my teammates did that, I would also probably advocate for dunking them in the pool.”
Outside of the futsal tournament, cherubs took part in a Zumba class led by McKenney. McKenney said her Zumba background dates to when she was an 8-year-old at summer camp.
“It’s really fun to do as a group because you’re all dancing together, and it’s accessible for everyone because it’s really easy moves,” McKenney said. “Cherubs is very different from my past experience. It’s much more focused on academics and less focused on athletics, so I just wanted to put on the music and let them dance.”
Zoe Romney of San Francisco said she loved getting to play sports she hadn’t played since middle school.
“I ended up doing a bunch of different sports,” Romney said. “Tennis is really fun. I went up there with Ellie (Adams) and the facility was really big. Neither Ellie or I play tennis, but we figured it out and lost all the pressure.”
Fun Night provided cherubs with a much-needed break and brought them closer through sport, Romney said.
“It was really good at building camaraderie,” Romney said. “I joined a bunch of random groups, like passing a volleyball around or playing basketball. It is something I wanted to do again after, and I got to know a lot more people better.”
