Kappas helping up DGs? Alpha Phis slapping fives with Thetas? As strange as it sounds, this year of Greekend football proved to be a unifying event in helping bring members of different women’s fraternities closer together.
Instead of women’s fraternities playing against one another, the teams were instead divided by classes. Panhellenic Panel President and junior class quarterback Emily Blum said that Panhellenic made the decision to make the change for numerous reasons.
“In past years the games have really been getting too physical and too emotionally aggressive, and it wasn’t fun for a lot of people,” explained Blum. “There is no obligation that Greekend has to be a repeat of IM football. That’s a whole season; that’s a whole three months of football. We just didn’t think it was necessary to have again.”
Senior Caroline Carr played in Greekend as a sophomore and now as a senior, and she believes that while some seniors may not like it, this new Greekend football style is going in the right direction.
“I think it’s been hard for the seniors to take this change because we all have become really close with our respective sororities. For the freshmen, since this is their first year, they will move up and become a closer unit of freshmen because of it, and less divided,” said Carr.
While inter-sorority bonding was the primary goal, the weekend was not without entertaining games. The juniors won all three of their games, and the first-year come-from-behind victory over the seniors proved to be the most exciting game of the weekend.
For the fraternities, however, the turnout was disappointing. Instead of making the change that the women’s fraternities did in determining teams through class, the Inter-Fraternity Council decided to maintain tradition and keep the competition between fraternities.
Unfortunately, Beta and Sig were both unable to field a team, leaving TKE and Phi to duke it out for the championship. While TKE proved victorious, Greekend football for the fraternities did not live up to the excitement that previous years provided.
Sophomore referee Keenan Durham recalled last year’s intense atmosphere of Greekend football and was hoping to experience much of the same this year.
“For the guys, there was a little disappointment in the lack of participation and support for Greekend. Greekend is a chance for the frats to earn bragging rights and I was looking forward to seeing that intensity,” said Durham.
Even though many people have fond memories of the rivalries between the women’s fraternities and fraternities in Greekend football, this weekend showed that there may be a transformation underway.
Women’s fraternities are beginning to use the weekend as an opportunity to pull themselves closer together and develop relationships that may have been previously hindered because of women’s fraternity boundaries. Fraternities, on the other hand, need to boost participation if they want to continue the fraternal rivalries that are fond memories for many Whitman students.
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