Abilene Christian College - Prickly Pear Yearbook (Abilene, TX)

The early April afternoon was gray. Gray because the end of the semester loomed near enough to feel the weight of unfinished term papers, but not near enough to feel the relief of graduation. Gray, because the West Texas weather couldn't decide whether to be winter or summer. Gray . . . but not everywhere. On the well-worn intramural field at Hardin- Simmons University the afternoon was fluorescent orange, bright peacock blue and pastel yellow, green and pink. No, not a pop-art painting, but fluorescent orange insulated coveralls, a bright peacock blue sweatshirt and a pastel yellow, green and pink blanket wrapped around an-almost-blue-from-the-cold-coed. The coveralls, the sweatshirt and the blanket were gathered at HSU for Almost Anything Goes competi- tion, where the spirits of the students clad in bright colors contrasted with the dismal, end-of-semester blues as much as the colors contrasted with the gray sky. Almost Anything Goes placed Texans from the three local colleges against out-of-state students. About 200 students left studies behind to attend or participate in the competition. The afternoon's series of unusual athletic events in- cluded the inner tube roll, in which one person crawled inside four inner tubes and team members rolled him Opposite page: right - In the decorate-your-dean relay Liz Lane, junior radio-television major, pours milk on Norman Archibald, associate dean of stu- dents, top - Bart Castle, president of the Students' Association, and Andi Cannedy, junior public rela- tions major, huddle togetherg bottom - Clark Rid- dell, a sophomore public relations major from Redlands, Calif, competes in the banana peel race. down the field - or diagonally across the field and in- to a photographer. The mattress carry especially pleased the crowd of about 60. The event required male team members to race while carrying all female team members on a dangerously sagging mattress. Competition between Lone Star state residents and the "foreigners" was lighthearted, with cheers like g'Texans, Texans you're so bad, look at the scoreboard, oh, so sadf' The three schools also competed against each other in the cowchip and decorate-your-dean relays. However, the student government presidents and deans of the schools may have thought, with good cause, that the events were designed solely for their discomfort. ACU won the cowchip relay. Spectators were not sure whether the victory came because of Students' Association president Bart Castle's running expertise or his classmates' eagerness to stuff dried and not-so- dried cowchips into the baggy pair of pants he wore while running down the field and back. Bart and his McMurry and HSU counterparts end- ed up with smelly green legs. But after seeing the decorated deans, the presidents probably thought they were lucky. In a contest reminiscent of summer camp escapades, students transformed their deans into egg- and-butter-smeared, shaving-cream-topped, toilet- paper-wrapped mummies. Leaving the deans to unwrap and contemplate revenge, Texans and non-Texans regrouped for the tug of war, which spectators were invited to join. The non- Texan team won the event, so ACU's Texan coor- dinator, Jack Hodge, took his promised dive in the HSU pool. Just before Jack took his heroic plunge, the sun broke through the clouds and banished the gray. In the end the weather matched the spirit of Almost Anything Goes. v- Kelly Deatherage Almost Anything Goes 63