By Challa Sai Anudeep, JEM - Sportscomm, Batch of 22-24
"Playing games is the best time of your life, and the more games you get, the better it is." These were the famous words of legendary (pun intended) Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and we at SportsComm strive to make this happen every day, week, month, and year.
India celebrates National Sports Day on 29th August to commemorate the birth anniversary of hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand. The day is also dedicated to the country's sports heroes, honoring their contributions and dedication to bringing laurels to the nation. Its main aim is to raise awareness about the values of sports and to encourage the public to take up sports while emphasizing the importance of being fit and healthy.
It has always been a tradition for SportsComm of IIFT Delhi to conduct games on account of National Sports Day. Even during the pandemic, our seniors dug out a way to organize exciting events in an online scenario to keep up the ritual by introducing PitStop in 2021. PitStop depicted the need to refuel and charge ahead, which is precisely what the games aimed to achieve by giving them a much-needed respite. Carrying on with this legacy, we kicked off this year's activities by organizing the second edition of our inaugural event, PitStop 2.0, with a day full of fun-filled activities.
The day started with Pictionary, which was hosted online over a platform named Gartic. We had a great turnout for the event and hosted the game in multiple rooms. Our batchmates donned their creative hats and went all in with their artistic skills to win. The top three scorers from all the different rooms qualified for the final round, and all the participants, apart from having fun, brought a strong competitive spirit. The top three emerged as winners, topping off a great start to the day.
Next up, we had a battle of the brains with a Chess event. Thanks to technology, we were able to conduct Chess online as well by creating a room in LiChess. We set up the room for a timeline of one hour, and players were randomly mapped to each other during the time. When one game got over, the player was assigned another game with a different player. Mind-blowing battles ensued as time passed, and at the stroke of the hour, three players with the most number of wins formed the top three, which they thoroughly deserved.
Post Chess, we had a battle-on-ground with a Call Of Duty: Mobile event. We created a room with all the players on one map and opened the stage for some exciting battle royale. We encountered some pretty intense exchange of bullets. Players brought out their best strategies and near-perfect aiming skills to win the top prize. The top three players with the most kills were declared the winners of this event.
We topped off an enthralling day with the first offline event, Tambola. We rallied the batch to assemble on the campus to have much more fun in an offline setting. For this event, we were joined by a few of our seniors. Each person was given just one ticket and was not charged for it (The first game is on us xD). Although the seniors started by taking most of the initial prizes, juniors bounced back by the end of the day to level it up. Together, we had truck loads of fun and multiple winners for various prizes.
On the eve of National Sports Day, we also organized a separate event on Unstop. In collaboration with Quintessential - The Quizzing Cell of IIFT Delhi, we conducted a quiz and had close to 800 registrations from various colleges. It was a huge success, and we also distributed cash prizes for the top three participants with the highest scores