From an incredible Mac-A-Bee breakout, to a remarkable and incredible victory for the senior class, this year’s SAR HS Mac-A-BEE was definitely one for the record books. The energy and excitement that filled the auditorium as captains were announced was a sign of things to come as the students competed in two days of intense competition filled with ruach and sportsmanship. Continuing the year long theme of Tikkun Hamidot, each team’s theme embodied one of Rav Salanter’s midot. Freshmen were team Anava, Sophomores—Kavod, Juniors—Menucha and Seniors—Emet. After the epic breakout, the school divided for team meetings, in which students planned for the traditional tug of war competition. Each team won at least one round of tug-of-war!
Day two kicked off with tefilla, followed by some beit midrash learning where each team focused more intently on the their specific midah, taking an in-depth look at the various sources in the torah describing each midah. After our theme learning, the competitions began!
Many of last year’s new Mac-A-Bee competitions were back again, including Hungry Hungry Hippos, Dodgeball, Hebrew Song, Logo Design and Torah Scavenger Hunt along with school wide Panoply and a redesigned Amazing Race. They were joined by more new competitions for 5778, including: Knee Hockey, Project Runway, Spikeball, Bitmoji Competitions (each team was responsible to make a Bitmoji representing each administrator), Codenames, Instagram Story (each grade created an Instagram story, capturing all the excitement of Mac-A-Bee), Chopped (pronounced Chap’t), Door Decorating, Game Theory and Classroom Transformation (students had to transform a classroom to reflect their theme).
There were three chesed-based competitions. First, was a “Baking For Pots” competition, where students spent the morning baking chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were brought to POTS soup kitchen on Tuesday afternoon. Additionally, students ran our annual Chanukah Toy Drive. And lastly, many students spent time writing Chanukah cards for chayalim in Israel.
Together with the classic potpourri of events, ranging from game show style competitions (Geography Bee, Ivrit Pitgamim, Jeopardy, Chidon and the always popular Name That Tune) to board games (Codenames, Candy Land, Scrabble, and Speed Chess), the Social Media competition across many popular platforms (including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), to multimedia tasks (team commercials), the revamped Iron Chef cooking challenges, to drama improv and the full gamut of fine and performing arts (art relay, banner, song, etc.), an amazing Torah Scavenger Hunt and of course, a multitude of sports, this year Mac-A-Bee truly had something for everyone.
As Mac-A-Bee began to wind down, just before the finale performances in the auditorium, the entire school gathered in the gym for a special Mac-A-Bee kumzitz. To quote a senior, “The kumzitz is when we were unified as one school.” Students from different backgrounds, in different grades, representing different teams, with varied interests and talents, came together to sing and support each other in a beautiful show of achdut. While the main focus of Mac-A-Bee is often on the competition, these moments spent together in song reminded students that while they may compete on the court, stage, canvas or screen, at the end of the day they are really building one SAR High School community!
