Issue date: 3/26/09 Section: Greek Week Guide

Members of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity participate in the Tugs event on April 9, 2008, at the Campus Pond. This year's competition runs from Monday until April 4, which is the day of the finals. (Erin Matheny/The Daily Eastern News)

Sigma Chi fraternity members work together during the tugs competition at the Campus Pond on April 11, 2008. (File Photo/The Daily Eastern News)

After the muddy event it turned into last year, Greek Week's Tugs of 2009 looks to be another highly anticipated year with even more friendly competition.

Kevin Lee, coordinator for the Greek Week Rules and Games, said seven big men teams, eight little men teams and nine women teams have signed up and are looking to earn points for their houses.

With practices beginning in January and the final weigh-in Saturday, the tugs teams have been hard at work for months, conditioning and preparing for the competition ahead.

Each fraternity or sorority uses this time to their full advantage by doing more than just playing tug-of-war over the campus pond during their training.

"The first few months we focus on endurance and conditioning," said Emily Froemel, the Alpha Sigma Tau house coach.

During this time, they did exercises such as lunges, running and wall sits to build their leg strength and endurance, she said.

Endurance is key to tugging according to Adam Weaver, senior tugger and captain of the Sigma Phi Epsilon team.

"If you are able to work over an extended amount of time, it allows you to use your time more wisely," he said.

As a team, they work on rope and tugging technique, but they also do work on their own in the gym to become stronger individually.

This will be Weaver's third year participating in Tugs and he has had his team hard at work to help defend their title after winning the big men's title last year.

"For us, (winning) was big because we had never won the big men's championship and nobody thought we would do much," Weaver said. "It was a thrill to not only win it for yourself, but for the fraternity."

With the winning team in each category earning five points for their sorority or fraternity, tugs has become a competitive event for Greek Week each year on campus.

"(Tugs) is one of those times when alumni come to support a lot more and it has become a much bigger tradition compared to some of the other events during the week," Weaver said.

Greek Sing is the only Greek Week event that has been held longer than Tugs. Tugs has also stimulated healthy competition among the Greek society on campus.

"We take pride in our houses and everybody is really competitive between the houses," Froemel said.

As for how the teams will stack up this year, Weaver is confident in his tuggers.

"We are better than we were last year," he said. "Everybody knows how hard we trained last year, so we have stepped it up and are driven that much harder."

Divisions will take place over the Campus Pond at 4 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, and at 3 p.m. April 3. The finals will at 2 p.m. April 4.


Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached at 581-7942 or at kzyskowski@eiu.edu.

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