ALYSSA GALL
SPORTS WRITER
Photo by KELSEY WEISS
On Friday, Oct. 25, Alma athletics kicked off their winter sports season with the annual Throwdown in A-Town event. This event gathered all of Alma’s sports teams to come together for fun games and entertainment, while acknowledging the beginning of sports like Basketball, Swimming, Indoor Track and Field, STUNT and a few others.
Cheer and STUNT Coach Michelle Sabourin, who helped coordinate and advise the event, said, “Throwdown is the winter sports season kick-off. We started the event in 2013 as a way to bring a midnight madness type event to Alma College. We have since opened it up to be more of a pep-assembly event that brings all of athletics together.”
A-Town is a way to bring all of the sports teams closer. It not only gives students a break from the monotony of their school day, but is put on to teach athletes about each other’s sports and the differing teams on campus.
“Throwdown in A-Town is an event put on by Alma College SAAC (student athlete advisory council) and I [Sabourin] serve as one of the SAAC advisors,” said Sabourin.
SAAC hosts many events for students with A-Town being one of them. The purpose of these events typically centers around not just the students, who are all welcome to attend, even if they are not an athlete, but the relationship between the teams and coaches as well.
A-Town helps build unity among the college, teams and coaches. It involves numerous events and games for students and coaches to be involved in or entertained by.
“It brings athletics, Greek life and hopefully other members of the student body and community together for a fun night,” said Sabourin.
At this A-Town, students were treated to performances by the drum line from the Kiltie Marching Band, the Dance team, a free throw competition between the Men and Women’s basketball team and a dodgeball competition between the coaches as well as an opening performance from the Cheer and Stunt team.
These performances kick off their season and give the students a look at what each sport entails and as to what each team has been up to in their off season.
When asked why the Cheer and Stunt team love being a part of A-Town, Sabourin said, “As a sport where our result is based on strong performances, we love any opportunity to perform in front of a crowd!”
Besides these performances from the winter sports and coaches, other teams participated in the event as well.
Every year at A-Town, there is a tug of war challenge between the different sports seasons and Greek Life. This is where one member from each team participates in a game of tug of war to represent their team and season.
This year, winter sports went up against fall sports first and then went all the way to defeat Greek Life in the final and become the winner.
“My favorite part is the different contests because they’re pretty funny to watch,” said Jayce Kuehnlein (’22), a member of the Wrestling team.
Another challenge that happens every year is the “minute-to-win-it” challenge, where the winner gets their team and themselves VIP seats at the Scotty awards, another SAAC event for the athletes.
For this challenge, teams pick one player to represent their team. This player then had to hold a balloon with pencils while keeping their arms straight and only being able to grip the edge of the pencils.
When they got down to the finalists, they then had to hold the end of a pencil eraser between a stretched-out rubber band with their arms still remaining straight.
