Sports Day!



The LGC girls play kickball.

 In Korea, from elementary school to university, there is a "Sports Day" every year. Students are split along with the class and compete with other classmates. However, in college, because there are a lot of students, each department organizes a sports day. Each department has several majors, and each major competes with the others.

On Oct. 7^th, there was a sports competition between the law department and Linton Global College. As I mentioned above, the competition is held by each school department, but Linton Global College, which only has two majors and a small number of students compared to the other departments, joined up with one of the small departments' sports competition.

There were several games at the competition that were only for boys or for girls, and some that were for both genders. For boys, there was soccer, basketball, and foot volleyball, and for girls, there was dodgeball, kickball, and girls’ free throw. For both genders, there was tug-of-war, jump rope, seven-legged race, and relay. Most people at the event said that the most exciting games were the ones with both genders.



LGC students cheering on their team.



But the most interesting part of the sports competition was food. Each team cooks for their players at their bench, and it cheered up both players and supporters. Sun-bo and Hye-jin from LGC said, “Even though we are not playing the games, we are enjoying today because we also can be a player by cooking and cheering them up.” Usually, students made buchimge, Korean pancakes, and some say that the real charm of the sports day is eating buchimge while cheering up the players.

One of the goals of the sports day is improving the teamwork of the group. Asian cultures usually give priority to the group rather than the individual, and this is true for Korean culture, too. Hannah (LGC) said, “It’s a good chance to show how each team has good teamwork.” Also, each team has a unique uniform. Most interviewees said that they really like their uniform, and it enhances the feeling that they are part of a team and representing a group. Jun-taek said, “Because of the uniform, I can easily tell who is in my major. There are many students in the law department, so that it’s hard to know each other."

Jun-taek, from the law department.

For foreign students who come from western countries, the sports day was a new cultural experience. Rachel (LGC, exchange student from the U.S.), who is from Western Carolina University, NC, U.S., said, “It’s good chance to be out of the class room,” and added, “My university doesn’t have anything like this. After seeing the sports competition, I want to go back to my university and tell the leadership about this, and see if we can start something similar.” Moses (LGC, exchange student from Uganda), who was a number one runner and led LGC to win the all-around championship, said that it was interesting that the sports day is supported by the student council, not by the university, even though it’s such a big event.

--Soo-min Kim