Sitting on the frozen ground, no feeling in your fingers and there's two men and a small girl screaming at you. Ten other girls are trying to pull you out of the ground. Your side is bruised and your legs are sore. What's not to love about puddle pull?
Puddle pull is that event in Greek week that people actually practice for. Fraternities pick the strongest guys and sororities look for the athletes in the crowd. It is on a Saturday morning and, weather permitting, people fill the stands to watch man-thigh and arm flexing, and girls either proving their strength or laughing as they fly out of the ground.
My friends and I thought it would be both hilarious and interesting to put together a "senior pull." Only two of us had ever done puddle pull before, and warned it wasn't going to be easy, but the rest of us shrugged their advice off and signed up.
We practiced late at night for two weeks leading up to the event. After just one practice we were all complaining of being too sore to walk, sit down, lift our arms... we're not the strongest bunch of girls, obviously. We had three coaches, and they encouraged us while also causing extreme pain at practice.
Despite the pain all over our bodies and the bruises that just continued to get worse, I got to hang out with some of my favorite people in the world night after night. We all have crazy schedules and homework up to our ears, but for these two weeks we got to laugh, cry, grunt, and scream with pain (there might even have been some nausea involved) together.
When Saturday came we had our shirts ready and our game faces on. It was 34 degrees Fahrenheit and there was snow on the ground. After an hour sitting on an icicle that used to be a bench, it was time for us to pull! Our coaches said we were ready and we shed our coats to prove our practice paid off...
Yeah, you might have guessed it, we lost. We lost bad. The rope was so cold no one had feeling in their fingers the instant we grasped it. We didn't hear the referee say "Go" when the match started. Our coaches said not so quietly, "They really don't do well under pressure." We didn't get one good hit in. But we were laughing so hard we didn't even notice. So I say again... what's not to love about puddle pull?
