With the loss of in-person Spork Wars, the senior picnic, and so many other spirit events for the Class of 2021, due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the Wolverine Wars is an exciting new virtual replacement created in order to bring the graduating class together. 

One of the first tasks to complete in the Wolverine Wars was to figure out a group name. With 8-10 people per group, coming to a consensus is no easy task. Here are a few seniors’ responses regarding why they picked their team name. 

Chidinma Agbasi (The Chicken Nuggets): “Well, my team really likes chicken nuggets and sauces, and so we thought that “The Chicken Nuggets” would be a good name.”

Sophie Poritzky (Willoughby Wanderers): “We came up with our team name based on a place we wanted to go and used some alliteration!”

Other teams came up with an acronym consisting of the first letter of every team name. For example, Sadie Sherman’s team (The Backslide Sharks) consists of Lola Murti, Sadie Karp, Aoife Hogan, Elana Abrams, Ekaterina Balsan, Raiya Dhalwala, Maya Chari, Sadie Sherman, Isabella Holmes, and Clara Barschdorff. When they created an acronym of their first letters they created Backslide Sharks. 

Over the past four weeks, each team has been completing as many challenges as possible. Some of their favorites are included below.

Divya Venkatesh enjoyed Week 2’s De-Stress event for which she broke a plate. Venkatesh was going to break a plate with a friend because of a TikTok trend that she saw, but after the stress relieving activity was uploaded, she knew she definitely had to go through with the plans. Venkatesh wrote down everything she wanted to let go of on the plate. “The activity is as stress relieving as it was advertised to be. Sitting down and writing everything you want to let go of helps you think about the changes that you want. Also, breaking the plate helps get your rage out (safely) and feels like you’re putting the negativity in the past,” said Venkatesh.

Aroni Goongoon from “The Chicken Nuggets” is a big fan of the smaller challenges that happen almost every day of the week. “These mini challenges add a little more spark to my day and give me a sense of normalcy by still participating in something made for the senior class,” said Goongoon.

The comedy night, teacher cook-offs, and Zoom-based livestreams are other fun and collaborative ways to get points, because team members have to join a Zoom meeting and participate in the chat feature and the Google forms while interacting with other students and staff. 

The Leaderboard

As of March 22nd, 2021, the teams entitled, “We want Andy Huang from Captain Crunch,” “$hmoney Team,” and “Spain Without the S,” were in the lead. Let us see how they were able to advance so efficiently. 

The team entitled, “We want Andy Huang from Captain Crunch,” said: “Our longing for Andy has lit our souls on fire, and set us on a never-ending journey to obtain what’s ours.”

“$hmoney Team” said that they use a text group chat to remind each other to complete the challenges. “With these reminders, we ensure that we will collect the most points possible, or at least very close to it.” 

As of March 24th, 2021, “Spain Without the S” moved up the leaderboard to second place and they said, “Teamwork is definitely a big part of success in Wolverine Wars. We have a group chat that we use to work together on more team-based events like the logo design or riddles and keep each other updated on when we have submitted things for the more individual challenges, such as sending in a picture of something. We remind each other about deadlines, and we make sure that everything we submit goes in before that deadline. We don’t consider any number of points too small, but we do make sure that we all go to the big events each week. They’re not only fun, but they have have helped us to maintain a high position on the leaderboard.”

The competition is getting more challenging as the weeks pass by. So, the seniors of the Class of 2021 cannot wait to see what the upcoming challenges are going to be. According to Mr. McNickle, Senior Council advisor, Wolverine Wars is the biggest project that any senior council has done in seven years. Each week’s activities are planned by a different pair of Senior Council members, which takes incredible organization skills and dedication. “Wolverine Wars began as a way to adapt senior traditions to remote learning, but I think it has the potential to become a new tradition on its own merit,” said Mr. McNickle.  

“Wolverine Wars began as a way to adapt senior traditions to remote learning, but I think it has the potential to become a new tradition on its own merit,” said Mr. McNickle, Senior Council advisor.