Last Tuesday, the two first-year Aquinas classes went head to head in a battle to be written about by poets and philosophers alike for ages to come. I am merely the first.
The ‘Aquinas: Great Books’ class were the ones to initiate the challenge to the ‘Aquinas: Great Books for Journalists’ class and charged the court like the Greek army coming to level Troy and reclaim Helen.
While the regular Great Books class looked intimidating with their matching red shirts, the Great Books for Journalists class decided their best course of action would be to confuse their enemies and wear a multitude of colours, chanting, “We’re number 4!”
Mitchell Peardon from the Great Books for Journalists team, the masterful tactician he is, took the idea one step further and wore jeans on the court.
“They make you sweat. That makes you run faster.”
A bold strategy – clearly the Odysseus of the group.
As the game began to unfold, it was clear for the Great Books for Journalists team this game was perhaps less like the Trojan War, and more like Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and short, as the regular Great Books team quickly took the lead.
This, however, did not dampen team morale for the young journalists. During half time, they started cheering again, this time chanting, “Let’s get weird.”
Though morale was up, scores were down and despite little David taking down mighty Goliath with a pebble, in that fable there was only one Goliath. In this game regular Great Books had two giants of sport: Zachary and Christian Lake (a.k.a. the Harrington Twins) who eased through the crowded court as if they were practicing alone.
At the end, when the final scores were tallied, it came out to 44 – 24 in favour of the regular Great Books class.
With the battle over and the dead counted, the two teams shook hands and made amends. However, it is clear that a battle had been won, but not the war, as the two teams quickly challenged each other to battle another day.
This time it’s dodgeball.
