Tom's Amazing Cup Game
By: Lindsey Jacobs
   
1600 plastic cups, 8 hula hoops, and 93 super senior campers: it was time for Tom's Amazing Cup Game! The rules are simple but the action is intense. The single goal of this classic evening activity is to create the highest tower within a hula hoop using only 200 plastic cups. Some restrictions apply as bunk groups cannot verbally communicate once play has begun, only have ten minutes to complete their tower and only one person can place one cup onto the tower at a time. A new twist was added to last night's event: if any of the rules were broken, one cup from the BOTTOM layer of the building must be removed (yikes!).
 
  To start, each team (bunk group) had about 5 minutes to strategize because as soon as time was up, the field house would have to become silent!
 
As the planning time stopped, it was time to start construction! All teams had a different approach. Some were fairly free-formed...
while others started with intricate bases of triangles and circles.
As the ten minutes ticked away, the towers grew taller and taller. 
 
   
  Like many great projects, some towers needed to be rebuilt since no sorts of adhesive were permitted and it is not easy to be extremely delicate! 
     
  Time was up and the structures stood tall.  The competition was close and all groups were eager to see who the winner was...but wait! Each group would be given 5 more minutes to continue building.  
So the groups kept building...    
    and building! Yes, the towers were so tall that counselors needed to get on each others shoulders to continue!
Campers looked on nervously as the towers reached their maximum height.    
     
  When the competition came to a close, the judges, Todd, Dave, and Karli, had some big decisions to make. Because the groups had different sized cups, it was hard to decide which criterion should be used to declare a winner: based on number of rows or sheer height. In the end, there was no way to overcome this dilemma so to follow the Campus Kids motto, everyone was declared a winner!
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