HILDA WILLIS ROOM — Winchester Thurston successfully held its first Classcapades event on Tuesday morning, an exhilarating display of WT’s community spirit, competitive bent, and  fondness for video games.

Students and teachers alike gathered in the Hilda Willis Room to watch their peers and colleagues play MarioKart, a popular racing video game made by Nintendo. Four students from each grade competed in four rounds, and the individual winners of each round battled each other for the student championship. In addition, four teachers competed among themselves for the faculty championship. 

The final round, which was to determine the school MarioKart championship, was a race between the student champion, Vik Sinha ‘22, and the faculty champion, Mr. David Kallas. Ultimately, despite a difficult racetrack and a raucous crowd, Sinha clinched the victory. In a brief interview with Mr. Kevin Miller after the race, Sinha said that he was nervous the night before, but some quick practice allayed his fears. 

“I was mostly relieved; in the week leading up, I felt pretty stressed, so I trained quite a bit and that training paid off,” Sinha added. 

As usual, the event brought out WT’s fierce competitive spirit. Each grade was assigned a color to wear, and there was a noticeable correlation between the volume of cheers and the color of the students’ shirts. Sophomores, who wore red, were frequently the loudest grade; they won three out of four preliminary rounds and narrowly lost the fourth. Their strong showing in Tuesday’s event foreshadows future success in MarioKart competitions by that class.

Student Council will be holding more Classcapades, tentatively including dodgeball and karaoke, later this year.