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Kaelyn Jones

As the competitors prepare for leg five to begin, ASB adviser Blake Williams overlooks the event. This is Williams’ first year helping to organize Amazing Race. “This is really a student-led activity. And because I knew nothing, [the students] really had to take the lead and show me [how it’s run],” Williams said.

Organized by the Associated Student Body (ASB) alongside adviser Blake Williams, the Amazing Race is almost entirely student-led. For over a decade now, the mock game show production featuring seniors has been a tradition. Each year, the event follows a theme followed throughout the week— this year, the theme was blockbuster movies.

Each leg of the competition was themed after different movies. This includes “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” and more. To start off the competition, 10 teams of two students were selected to compete. Throughout the course of the event, teams were eliminated until only the winning team remained.

“Watching it has been hilarious. It’s been really cool. Like, I’m a huge ‘Star Wars’ fan and I’m a huge ‘Harry Potter’ fan,” Williams said. “I’m old enough to have seen all the movies originally. I really got to have fun creating some of the ideas for them.”

Each leg brings new challenges for the remaining teams to face. Challenges range from crosswords and quizzes, to three legged races, and more. After each task is completed, the team receives a hint leading to a new location on campus with a new challenge.

“[ASB members] try to make up an equal amount of mental and physical challenges,” Williams said. “We tried to theme [the challenges] to the movie– like destroying a [‘Harry Potter’] horcrux, finding an egg, defeating a ghost, or looking for buried treasure.”

Pink team Anna Lyons and Kate Bucher, both seniors, ended the competition in fifth place.

“We’ve done multiple things together,” Bucher said. “We started a book club at the school and we were captains together for soccer. We know how to work well together as a team.”

At the end of the competition, the top three teams got to select prizes, choosing between Hydroflasks and various gift cards. On top of that, a donation was made to a charity of their choice. 

First place, Kaia Kadel and Ella McKay won $500 to donate to Every Body Athletics. In second place, Andrew Melvin and Maddox Gilbertson donated $400 to Liberty in North Korea. In third place, Koffi Kouamè and Ajani White donated $300 to Black Youth Project 100. The rest of the teams earned money based on their ranking, with no team earning less than $100. 

“We [chose] Breast Friends. It’s supporting awareness for breast cancer,” Lyons said. 

Lyons and Bucher raised $200 for Breast Friends. Overall, this years’ Amazing Race raised over $2000 for the teams’ various charities. 

“It’s a West Linn originated foundation of moms who had suffered through it, and we wanted to do something more local than just [breast cancer awareness,]” Bucher said.