Friendship Games 2017
Hi everyone! My name’s Richelle, and I’m one of the APASA interns this year! I’m also an intern for Troy Philippines (Troy Phi), the Filipino culture club at USC under APASA, and our club recently participated in the 32nd Annual Friendship Games at Cal State Fullerton!
For those of you who may not know, Friendship Games is an huge event that features over 40 Pilipino American Student organizations from colleges all throughout California, Nevada, and Arizona in which we call get together to participate in a day of friendly and competitive picnic games. At FG, we celebrate “S.P.U.F.” - Spirit, Pride, Unity, and Friendship while “spuffing it out” with other Filipino clubs via chants, skits, and dances. For the lack of a better description, Friendship Games is basically one big Filipino Olympics/spirit rally.
It was my first time attending Friendship Games, and it was just such an amazing and fun experience! After weeks and weeks of training for the games, the members of Troy Phi were up at 5:30am on Saturday, October 28th, ready to play and spuf on for ‘ol TP. Decked out in USC game day themed gear, we were ready to spread that Trojan spirit and show the other schools how these SC tailgaters get ‘er done!
Even though our school had one of the smallest groups there, we gave Friendship Games our all and made up for it with our heart and spirit by being super loud and hyped up. My voice, along with everyone else’s, was gone by the end of the day. Throughout FG, we played a series of games that included Alpine Green, The Nasty, Big Groundhog, Conveyor Belt, and Up and Under. Although we didn’t take the big trophy home, Troy Phi placed second place in two of the games (which is a record for us, so shout out to Troy Phi for that!).
Overall, it was just a super fun-filled day as we got to interact with all of the other schools and see what they had to bring to the table. In addition to skits and chants, each school had their own theme (i.e. Disney, Magic School Bus, Peter Pan, Star Wars, etc.), so it was cool seeing everyone all dressed up and decked out with props as well. For me specifically, it was really nice and fun catching up with a lot of my friends from back home (I ran into like over 10 of them lol) who were also at Friendship Games competing with their schools. They also had a lot of good Filipino food there, which is always a plus. I cannot wait to go to Friendship Games again next year! 10/10 recommend joining Troy Phi and going to Friendship Games with us!
