Students at Banner Drop as midnight approached Sunday evening. Gabe Beckwith | Student Activites Board
Simpson leads the homecoming week competition after winning Wednesday night’s trivia contest on a tiebreaker question.
To break a four-way tie, judges asked competitors how far the Earth is from Mars at its most distant point. Simpson, with a guess of 232.5 million miles, was the closest to the correct answer of 249 million miles.
Sophomore and Simpson trivia team captain Thad Reudelhuber said the team found the answer with a last-minute calculation.
“We didn’t know the answer right away,” said Reudelhuber, who credited the estimate to teammates junior Andrew Hawken, freshman Isaiah Sebranek, and sophomore Luke Wilmington. “We calculated it because they knew the distance in astronomical units, and we just multiplied it by 93 million miles.”
The trivia event included other questions about Star Wars, astronomy, and space pop culture. Whitley finished second in the event, and Kalloway, a coalition of Galloway and Koon Dorms, took third. Off-Campus Coalition placed fourth, and Olds came in fifth.
Simpson currently leads the week with 385 points after finishing fifth in banner drop and second in the video competition. OCC is in second with 325 points, and Niedfeldt is in third with 300 points. Kalloway and Olds round out the top five, with 270 and 255 points.
Senior Sterrett Waltrip, another member of the Simpson trivia team, said this year’s homecoming is sentimental for him.
“Being a senior, homecoming this year matters more than most years,” Waltrip said. “To win trivia in the year it matters most and to be fighting to win it all again is awesome.”
OCC opened the week with a win at banner drop. Its banner depicts an Instagram post announcing the campus’ relocation to Mars. Olds Residence took second with a banner mimicking a film poster for an astronautical movie, and Niedfeldt placed third with a vintage comic book-inspired design featuring College President Larry Arnn’s Cybertruck.
“In my four years, these are some of the best banners I’ve ever seen,” senior and Simpson head resident assistant Nathan Rastovac said. “Every year it just gets better and better.”
Niedfeldt won Tuesday’s video competition by parodying the faked moon landing conspiracy. Simpson came in second with a video that took inspiration from the 2014 film “Interstellar.” OCC’s video, featuring a protagonist trying to shut down an evil robot, finished third.
Rastovac said introducing freshmen to the homecoming week festivities has been a blessing.
“Seeing all the new freshmen, not just from Simpson, but all the other dorms, get into it and get excited and get hyped, not just in banner drop, but also in the videos and hearing the leaders discuss how their mock rocks are coming, everybody’s super invested in it,” Rastovac said.
He also stressed the importance of participating in volunteer hours during the week.
“I think it’s a great way not only to do something good for homecoming, but to serve a community,” Rastovac said. “At the end of the day, this is a community-building week. As much as it’s a competition and there’s points involved, it’s also a recognition of all the hard work that our students put in and the sacrifices that they make.”
Volunteer hours submitted before 5 p.m. Thursday will count for homecoming points.
The week will continue with a Minute to Win It competition in Plaster Auditorium Thursday at 7 p.m. Volunteer hours will be announced at Hayden Hype Night Friday at 7 p.m.
Homecoming week will conclude with Mock Rock in the Dawn Tibbetts Potter Arena Saturday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.
