Students experienced quasi-naval combat while playing Battleship at the Thomas C. Courtway Student Recreation Center hosted by the The I.D.E.A.L Freshmen leadership team.
As the evening sunlight shone through the windows into the indoor pool, UCA students were brought together in the spirit of competitiveness, teamwork and strategy.
The game is simple; there are three people per team and two canoes per game.
The goal of the game is for each team to try to sink the other team’s canoe before theirs is sunken.
“Honestly, it’s really, really fun…and a lot harder than I thought it would be,” freshman psychology major Dovah said.
Whether battling in a canoe, or experiencing Bear life for the first time, balance seems to be the main focus of maintaining a healthy UCA experience – an experience events like these tend to spark among students.
This was one of many events that UCA organizations have put on in order to jolt lively engagement with students.
The game is meant to be a socializer in order to promote new freshmen experiences and community.
Many competitors expressed satisfaction with how they were able to get to know each other during the game.
Freshman Tristian Fitzgerald-Gates said the game had “great teamwork,” and that he enjoyed the overall experience.
There was also a spirit of competition within the crowd.
Freshman nursing major Alyssa O’Brien said that she and her team, “just don’t lose.”
Overall, there was a great sense of excitement and comradery.
This excitement is precisely what I.D.E.A.L seeks to inspire.
The I.D.E.A.L team is a group that focuses on Freshmen engagement and student outreach. Their goal stated on their website is that they strive to “set the example of compassionate servant leaders,” and to “further leadership skills in our members.”
I.D.E.A.L was originally a thesis written by Anthony Turner, who had taken inspiration from Sozen R Komives’s six main theories on what makes a good leader.
These included the “Trait theory,” “Situational Contingency theory,” “Influence theory,” “Behavioral theory,” “Situational theory” and “Great Man theory” of leadership.
While agreeing and disagreeing with some of Komives’s points, Turner felt that he could use and adjust some of these principles to help make good leaders.
This is what would eventually lead to the concept of how to teach someone to be “IDEAL.”
This would later come to form what is now known as the I.D.E.A.L. leadership team which applies Turner’s theories to UCA’s freshmen class.
In short, it is focused on what makes someone an “ideal” freshman leader.
