Challenging Four Arrows!

On Sunday, September 10th the Humanities House traveled to 14 Sherman Place in Storrs, at the UConn Depot Campus, to participate in the Four Arrows challenge course. This was the first time I had ever been to Four Arrows and I was not sure what challenges to expect. Some of my friends in a club I attend told me that Four Arrows was a great place to bond with teams and to learn valuable leadership skills. I was excited.

To introduce for those who do not know, Four Arrows is an outdoor course in the woods in which teams tackle against various challenges, using teamwork to think up and create new ways to overcome said challenges. On the website, Four Arrows states their mission is to “provide unique, challenging, and adventurous experiential learning programs specifically designed for individuals and groups to accomplish personal and team goals, promote character development, while learning through reflection. Sessions usually last about four hours, and it can be very fun and rewarding (or very frustrating depending on your team’s ability). For me, it was a mix of both.

Unfortunately due to transportation technicalities, we were unable to experience all the challenge courses, but we did make it through a good amount by the end of our session. When we arrived at the course, we were told by some of the staff to place our backpacks off to the side and form a huge circle on the grass. We spent some time introducing ourselves and played a bit of games to break the ice. After that, we were split into two groups and moved on to begin our challenges.

My group started on what was called “Nitro Crossing” there was a knotted rope hanging in the middle of a big circle, with four hula hoops laying on the ground around it. Our goal was to get everyone in our group to touch every hula hoop and return to the starting point. At first someone tried to leap from hula hoop to hula hoop, but it became obvious immediately that we needed to use the rope. Using the rope, we sent three of our bravest members to stand on each one of the hula hoops, that way they can help the rest of our members get around much faster and easier. Once each member had gone around and touched all the hula hoops, it was time for the three remaining members to complete the cycle. Looking back this was probably the most difficult part in that challenge because once the last member had to go through the hula hoops, there was nobody else to help them if they lost momentum on the rope while swinging. Fortunately, the last member made it swiftly.

The second challenge was a bit more difficult. It was called “Spider’s Web” and as the name states, we were required to get every member through a big “web” (tied rope) from one side to the other without touching it. The only catch was we needed at least one member to get through every single opening for us to complete it successfully. This was hard because this meant we needed to get members through the top of the web openings! So we devised a plan: We would send our smallest members through the top openings first, that way the rest of us who were larger could go through the bigger openings. Our method required members to be lifted and sent in horizontally, as if in a coffin, through the web. It worked great! We could get every member through without touching the web.

Our last challenge was called “Whale Watch”. We had to get everyone to stand on a giant see-saw and figure out a way to balance without either ends touching the ground for a full ten seconds. The catch was this see-saw was unbalanced, and one side was heavier than the other. Unfortunately, this is the part when my group failed and succumbed to fatigue due to hunger. It was very frustrating; I tried yelling commands to everyone so we could maintain our organization but I too found myself giving up and just playing around on the giant see-saw after about ten minutes of attempts.

Looking back on the trip, I can say with confidence that I really enjoyed it. The challenges my group faced were difficult, yet completable when we focused. I agree when people say that Four Arrows is a great place to learn team building, it really is. If you’re in an organization that would like to participate in doing challenges like the ones I have stated above, take a look at Four Arrows, you won’t be disappointed: http://fourarrows.uconn.edu/