A great deal of anticipation was building among the campus community in the weeks leading up to the All-School Picnic. On the morning of Wednesday, September 21, the student body along with staff and some of their families began to arrive at Lakeside Recreational Park in Assaria, Kansas. Located 10 miles south of Salina, the park owners maintain a small lake (Lake Wassy), beach area, water slides, rope swing, and many other amenities including an RV park. This site has long been the traditional location of Central Christian College of Kansas’s All-School Picnic. While the All-School Picnic has been a tradition for many years, this was the second consecutive year in the last six years that the event has taken place. This year’s Student Government Association (SGA) was up to the task, with the help of faculty and staff, of putting on this much anticipated event.
Led by the Student Body President, Reece Warren, the SGA team (VP: Kylee McMurrian, Marketing: Keragan Dix, Chaplain: Ashton Travis, Intramurals: Joel Creary) met early in the morning to gather all the supplies and equipment needed for the day’s activities. After a quick breakfast at Heartbeat Coffee, the SGA team headed to Lake Wassy to set up prior to the students, staff, and families expected arrival at 9:00am. It was a beautiful morning – sunny and 75 degrees with a projected high of 93 degrees. With beach music playing, droves of vehicles arrived, including two school vans driven by coaches Rick Hughes and Aaron Hoxie that offered a ride for students. The SGA team welcomed the campus community to the sandy shore of Lake Wassy ready for a morning full of dorm competitions. Resident Advisors (RAs) helped hand out colored bracelets to the residents on their wings and then gathered them together in their teams.
With teams assembled and ready to contend for the All-School Picnic Champion prize of a SGA-sponsored Chick-Fil-A party, SGA began organizing the first competition, the three-legged relay race. Each competition would be run twice – first with all the women’s teams and then with all the men’s teams. Pairs of students raced up the inclined sandy beach to a line of cones the students had to turn around at before racing back down to the start line. RAs and Staff kept an eye out for anyone trying to gain an unfair advantage. With each student racing with one leg in a burlap sack, many struggled up and down the beach, a few excelled, and a few brought many laughs to the onlookers. Followed by the three-legged race was the dizzy relay race, egg on a spoon relay race, the traditional egg toss event, and last but not least, the tug of war competition.
Guy Gardner and Aaron Hoxie led the way in helping SGA organize the tug of war competitions as the women’s teams and men’s teams assembled once more to battle in a test of physical strength, team spirit, and mental stamina. The Staff team looked to reclaim its tug of war title from last year’s All-School Picnic as they competed in the men’s bracket. The women’s bracket saw fierce competition until at last the winning team pulled for the final time. The Staff team competed in the championship of the men’s bracket after methodically claiming victory in the previous round; however, they were outmatched and fell to the winning team of students. With the competitions in the books, SGA tallied the scores as students got in line for lunch.
Creative Dining Services catered boxed lunches featuring Jimmy John’s sandwiches that everyone enjoyed. Before announcing the All-School Picnic Champion, Campus Pastor, Zach Fleming, baptized two students seeking to publicly commit themselves to following Jesus Christ. Students and staff gathered at the water’s edge to witness their confessions of faith and the baptisms that symbolize the believer’s identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. Then, the winner of the 2022 All-School Picnic was announced: Stoll Pit/Tri-Plex/Women’s Off-Campus team won and were rewarded with an SGA-sponsored Chick-Fil-A party in The Mudhole on October 5. The rest of the afternoon was set aside for the campus community to enjoy free time on the beach playing sand volleyball or other yard games as well as the water slides and other water activities. All in all, the tradition continued in success as over 96% of the student body attended in addition to the many staff and some of their families that made the trip. SGA is thankful to have another successful event in the books and the campus community is already looking forward to next year!
Interested in seeing photos from the day? Go to the Central Flickr page to view them.
ABOUT CENTRAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE OF KANSAS
Central Christian College of Kansas is a regionally accredited institution offering undergraduate and graduate-level programs. Central strives to offer Christ-centered education for the whole person – heart, mind, soul, and strength. Its history dates back to 1884, and it is located in the friendly town of McPherson, Kansas. Central is a strategically small college that offers over forty areas of residential study and a thriving online program for non-traditional students.
Original source can be found here.
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