Paddy or Patty!?

Top o the morning to ya.

I hope you all had a beautiful and memoryfilled Patty's day. Here's a recap of OT events:

My big and I did a small borg pregame. The sun was shining, skin felt warm in my backyard with darties already starting nextdoor.

Sunglasses were on. We sauntered over to the beautiful pine backyard and before long, we heard the blaring music of an OTx(insert other professional frats here) darty. Everything looked green: green grass, everyone covered in green shirts, green temporary tattoos, mysterious green drinks in emptied out water jugs.

One of my littles, Henry, and I roped some pledges (Jonah and Jonathan) into playing a pong game. Then we taught the game to some random people we didn't know. People came and left throughout the day, but we had a solid turnout overall. OT also got a crash course in something we've been long lacking for: a keg. Before long, bros were mouths down, feet up, crowd counting. By this point some of the pledges were there (for some reason Anthony was dressed like a lad from the Irish potato famine) and I handed them my camera and asked them to go around and take photos of the day! Sergio, Ale, Jonah and I got a SHPE pong game but called it a tie after going into overtime.

At the height of the darty, the music was blaring and people were singing and talking, taking selfies and playing games. We were trying to get a stack cup game going when the police showed up, and people started fleeing. False alarm! They just wanted us to turn the music down. Phillip's girlfriend was stuck on the roof and needed help getting down. 

After this, we continued in a smaller darty with pretty much just OT people. Eventually it wound down and people went their separate ways. Some went home to nap, some went to center city bar crawls, some peed on the street and were subsequently given a citation. What a magical holiday.

Some borg names that made appearances:

- upenn borg of trustees (mine)

- top of the borgin' to ya

- I think, thereborg I am

- shipping up to borgston

- borgton tea party

- I woke up in a new borgatti

- lamborghini

- four leaf borger

- borgen [broken] teeth

- borg to be wild

- nico moraborgto/ceydrick chigborg

Here are some firsthand accounts of the darty:

"It was so lit that the cops wanted to come" Tyler Edwards (AΘ)

"Lit crazy movie" - Sophie Gu (AΛ)

"It was sunny... I kept seeing my students though" - Divita Taduvayi (AK), Wharton 101 TA

"Everyone except OT were NPCs" - Nicholas Morabito (AM)

"Too many Asians" - Alex Jiang (AI), social chair

"My dad called me about taxes in the middle of it" - Raka Acharya (AΘ)

A world without paddy's day is one in which I don't want to be.

- Owen Frausto AI

Yao | Tip Squad has the potential to go far given more guidance

The Theta Tau Tip Squad entered the inaugural AKPsi x OT x PCT volleyball tournament looking to serve up some W’s and unfortunately ended the day only tasting L’s. However, the team had plenty of good moments that should sweeten the taste of the afternoon. 

The Tip Squad entered the midday affair with its hopes high. The team had heard the banter about engineers not standing a chance at volleyball and were ready to respond. After three close matches, the Dark, Red, and Gold were unable to disprove the stereotypes, ultimately bowing out of the tournament with a disappointing record of 0-3.

What was most unfortunate for the squad was that each game was within reach. In the first game of the tournament, Tip Squad took the court against PCT. It was a game of runs with multiple lead changes and momentum shifts. Unfortunately for the Dark, Red, and Gold, PCT had the momentum last, eeking outa 16-14 win. Nothing seemed to go right in the second game as Tip Squad ceded the game in 15-11 loss to AKPsi where it never felt like the team had a chance. 

In the team’s third game, with a spot to the finals on the line, things seemed dire at first as the Dark, Red, and Gold dug themselves into a deep hole. The opponent was a familiar one as the team once again lined up against PCT. This time, the momentum was largely controlled by PCT until the score was 14-9. It was match point and do or die for Tip Squad.

Hope is a deadly thing. With its back pressed up against the wall, Tip Squad saw a brief glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. Senior ace Tyler Edwards stepped up to the serving line. And proceeded to absolutely dominate. PCT was left defenseless, unable to come up with an answer for Edward’s potent serves. With the score tied at 14, it seemed like Edwards was about to lead Tip Squad to the promised land.

But as quickly as the spark of hope was ignited, it was smothered just as quickly. A mishit serve that fell out of bounds put PCT back on top at match point while also making it the last time Edwards would get a chance to punish PCT. This time, PCT didn’t make any mistake — the final dagger driving home the defeat coming as the ball fell to floor between three different players. And just like that, Tip Squad’s day was over — a lot of effort had gone into a winless day.

“Communication,” super senior Terence Lin said (or repeatedly shouted), was ultimately where the team fell short on the day. While the PCT and AKPsi brothers were yapping constantly, sometimes the sidelines for Tip Squad were a little too silent. The lack of energy made it hard for the team to capture and keep any of the momentum that leaned its way. 

Furthermore, today’s demonstration all but confirmed that Tip Squad possesses some of the best athleticism in the pre-professional frat world. Time and time again, the other pre-professional frat brothers were left speechless by how effortlessly junior Alex Jiang was able to land a missile of a spike or how sophomore Henry Sims was easily able to get his hands up for a well-placed block on an otherwise potent shot.

What’s more is that opponents were terrified of having to go up against many of our players. Of note were sophomore Katherine Li who completely ate the other team up whether it be serving, receiving, or setting — she also has the bruises on her legs to prove the extent of her efforts to keep the team in the game. And of course, this column wouldn’t be complete without giving a huge shoutout to senior ace Tyler Edwards.

Down by quite a bit and with the game at matchpoint, Edwards put the team on his shoulders as he won five straight rallies with several points coming right off the serve to tie the game up at 14-all. And although the team ultimately wasn’t able to seal the deal, the fact that the game was tied at all at that point just goes to show the potential that Tip Squad could have in the future given the time to practice and build up chemistry.

Chemistry is one the largest contributors to a successful volleyball team. And that chemistry is almost never formed overnight. The best teams practice day-in and day-out to achieve that ability to just know where each person on the court will be at any given second. While we definitely don’t have enough time for that, just a little bit of practice would go a long way in setting up our hitters with the balls that they like best, which the team struggled to accomplish during the sets. 

For now, the “engineers aren’t athletic” group can go to bed with the satisfaction with being proven right, but just wait. Next year, it wouldn’t be out of the question for Tip Squad to flip the script completely — to go from winless to undefeated. 

Until then, the Dark, Red, and Gold faithful can turn their energy toward Tip Squad’s closely related cousin, Brick Squad. The unit will be looking to make a deep playoff push in its upcoming matchup this Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

ALpha Lambda Bid Night (2/10/23)

2/13/23

Hellooooo this is Quinn, and for this blog post I will be giving all of you fine folks my account of the ALpha Lambda bid night.

So this was me and Karen’s first “real” event as social chair, which meant that the festivities started nice and early! 9:00 AM, to be exact, so we could drop off the drinks and speaker off at the venue without having to lug it all to the venue before the event. After Karen left to go to her quite honestly scary workout class in center city, I septa’d back and proceeded to pass out for a quick nap as I was sick as hell and running on fumes.

Okay so fast forward, post nap, it’s time for bid delivery. Terence, Anton, and I took our talents to the doors of Tendai (fuck it we) Ball and Angelo (no fun phrase) Sali. After playing the entirety of Sweet Yamz by Fetty Wap for them and a swift Smirnoff Ice session, it was time for the festivities to begin!

After getting ready, I made the decision to stay in my room and practice DJing instead of going to my pc playdate with the AZs (sorry y’all). And after a quick cameo at the AK pregame, everyone’s favorite social chairs headed over to the venue to get the festivities started. This semester, we decided to run it back to the same venue as when my pc (shoutout the AI’s) received our bids. So, like big like little, we were going to party it up at the salon.

Sadly, due to my ongoing fight with the common cold, I remained sober through the night, which is great news for you the dear reader as this will be a clear retelling of said night. To ensure that we optimize the intoxication levels, we rationed the alcohol available for consumption. That didn’t stop many of you all, though (I’m looking at you, Freddy SIUUUUUUU) from getting lit, which made my life as a DJ much easier. 

From there everything was going splendidly. Shalika and Riya were dancing and singing along to every song that was playing, as they do, and Ansh was excitedly awaiting the arrival of his 14 new children. Lare-I mean Karen was going around taking pics of everyone and their mothers (apparently there were over 900 pictures), while Ceydrick found a new bag to make his bitch for the night. Owen was having a 5-star dinner all alone at the balloon table, and Greg was beggin (what he was begging for, however, remains unknown to this day).

The pledges eventually arrived and promptly found the food like the little gremlin they are (jk they’re kinda cute ig <3). At some point during the night I played greg is beggin.mp3 to critical acclaim from the audience. I did, however, receive some very angry complaints that they didn’t know it was being played so if you feel like this was you, I give you permission to request the audio file from me (not sure how the copyright works with that @Vikki but I’ll just call it a remix for now). 

The whole night, I’m sure all of us were excitedly awaiting the debut of our Commander and Chief, Mira and Jocelyn. I’m not going to lie they kinda killed it but my favorite part would be Freddy’s interwoven shouts towards the pledges (Yifei does not fuck around). Then after hearing perhaps the most heinous pronunciation of Schuylkill in my life, we partied the night away for all of 10 minutes and began to wrap things up.

Fast forward to the postgame and things were just as chaotic as the venue. Vikki found the old embarrassing photos of the AKs from their initiation and decided to wear them as a part of her fit. Nothing like wearing Ryann’s face on your body to make a fashion statement. Laren Li became Waren Li after winning not once, BUT TWICE at pong, marking her first, second, and probably last ever wins. Tyler pulling up with the new speaker stand is another step towards us slowly getting a real sound system for OT. With our new and improved speaker set up, I promptly played boy’s a liar (the Ice Spice version of course) per request of Luka and I was surprised to see that it hyped up the people just as much as Just Wanna Rock did. And to top it all off, seeing all the pledges get sloshed was so cute it was almost enough to make a grown man cry. But it didn’t. 

If you got all the way to the end, first of all I don’t know why you would do that to yourself, but second of all, thank you for listening to me ramble for several paragraphs.

- Quinn