Dayna Wichhart—Staff writer

On Feb. 26 at 8 p.m., the underclassman women on campus were invited to the Grille to attend the kickoff event of The Hunt. This event is being held for the second time ever on Dordt’s campus.

The Hunt is a three-day campuswide scavenger hunt. During the three days, wings work together to complete challenges that are published each day. In addition to the challenges throughout the week, there is a team challenge in the evenings. In the evening challenge, wings receive the first clue and have to solve the clue and move to the next location until the mission is complete for the night.

At the end of the three days, the points will be totaled, and one wing will be crowned the winner of the Hunt.

“Girls really seemed to enjoy it last year and that has been good to see,” Ally Veldhuisen said.

Last year, Veldhuisen was in her first year as Learning Community Area Coordinator and came up with the concept of The Hunt. She was looking for a women’s event that could have a similarly competitive nature as Broomball.

“Doing the Hunt is a less intimidating competitive activity and allows for a lot of participation,” Veldhuisen said. “People can choose what they participate in, and the Hunt does not require athletic ability.”

Veldhuisen then spent time planning the nuts and bolts of how a campuswide scavenger hunt could work effectively. She found an app called GooseChase, which is used by many universities and camps for all sorts of activities.

The app allows for a group of people to join teams and view challenges released by the administrator. The app allows participants to submit pictures and videos to complete challenges. GooseChase also tracks the points awarded to each challenge and participants can watch the different wings and what place each wing is sitting at.

The Hunt includes a wide variety of different challenges such as riddles, finding certain people on campus, sneaking photos of people and places, or bringing anything but a backpack to classes. The challenges are designed to be completed throughout the regular flow of your day around campus.

Nia Boentoro was in the winning wing last year and looked forward to participating again this year as a sophomore.

“My favorite part included doing the challenges throughout the day because it made normal school more fun,” Boentoro said.

This year, Boentoro is an RA and led her own wing through the challenges of the Hunt. She is most looking forward to seeing what new challenges will be created this year and hopes to get lots of participation from her wing.

The hope for the Hunt is to build a sense of community within wings and also across wings as they engage in friendly competition.

“My favorite part of the Hunt was seeing girls in the wing spend more time together,” Kassie Brands said, “It helped girls meet new people and get to know their neighbors better.”

Brands was the RA of last year’s winning wing. Her wing would complete the challenges together and strategized who would do each challenge so that no challenge was left unfinished. During their team challenges, the wing enjoyed making videos with music tracks and allowed for their creativity to take over.

Contributed photo