Eyeing his target, junior Austin McKinley prepares to push a rolling chair as a part of the Office Olympics he created with two other students in Mrs. Laurie Penuel’s classroom during the power outage on Jan. 25. The outage lasted more than two hours before students were dismissed for the day.
Three juniors found a fun, yet competitive way to pass the time during the blackout in Mrs. Penuel's classroom
January 25, 2017
During the power outage, students Austin McKinley, Samuel Kaplan, and Will James decided to make the most of the uncommon situation, and have a little fun while stuck in Mrs. Laurie Penuel’s classroom
“The power went out so we decided to use some of the materials that are in the school and use our creativity,” James said. “[We] combined those to make a game called Office Olympics inspired from the TV series ‘The Office.’”
The three boys devised a game consisting of three events: chair rolling, shuffle board, and wiffle ball basket. In addition, there were points kept and medals given in gold, silver, and bronze, similar to an actual Olympic event.
“I did take gold in chair rolling, and I am in first as of right now for [shuffle board], so I do believe I am on the track for gold right now,” James said.
McKinley explained how the game worked, and how scores were kept, as they stated there were different sections with different point values, and those points are racked up and recorded depending on where their chairs land.
“We are in a very heated competition right now, we used a rolling chair with three dictionaries tied up on it, and we are using that weight to try to score the highest score we can,” McKinley said. “I think it was a fun thing to come up with to do during the power outage, something fun to do, we don’t want to sit in the dark.”
Though the scores varied for each round of events, Kaplan believed he could come out on top, as they all fought for gold overall.
“Right now, I’m just trying to do the best I can and come up from behind and end up taking the gold here so we will see how it goes,” Kaplan said. “We are going to decide the next game after this event.”
The final scores resulted in James scoring gold in chair rolling, McKinely scoring gold in shuffleboard, and Kaplan scoring gold in whiffle ball basket.
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