Regardless of the developments of the novel coronavirus, students are always craving social interactions. When the members of Arriba cannot get together physically, they will work hard to organise alternatives.
The annual team presentations, which are normally hosted in the Vestingbar also had to undergo the shift towards an online alternative. The resilience of the student basketballers at Arriba surfaced when the online alternative of the team presentations were first announced. Even though most teams had only had a few weeks of practise together, members collaborated online in order to come up with an exciting theme for this basketball season, and worked hard on interesting presentations.
In the previous years, teams would host a presentation to the association in a pub on Campus, this would go hand-in-hand with ridiculous activities and assignments, and generally a lot of laughter and playful verbal jabs. It is a whole task to emulate this atmosphere online.
Wednesday 11-11 it was finally time to get together with all of Arriba’s members. Students joined the virtual association room on Discord, not unfamiliar to them, it has been the home of all digital Arriba Drinks that have happened so far. Team members could sit together in different ‘voice channels’, and the presenter was visible on a live Twitch stream. This way, everyone could follow the presentation, and still interact with each other at the same time.
When the team of Ladies 2 kicked off the presentations the mood was set. A high school musical themed slideshow followed by a Kahoot quiz that provoked more questions than it answered, the bar was set.
A fun evening with a nice variation of themes followed. New this year was that some of Arriba’s active committees presented themselves as well. They showed that even though the association is quite restricted in which activities are possible to safely organize, they are not lacking the creativity to come up with worthy alternatives.
When the round of presentations was concluded by Gents 2 (who presented themselves as demigods), the evening was not over just yet. The party members kicked off the online after party by presenting themselves as Arrivengers and all members got together in one digital room to continue with a long night of classic Arriba fun. Some of Arriba’s oldest (party) members were glad to spice up the conversations with some legendary Arriba tales.
Let’s hope we can sit together in the Vestingbar again next year to add to Arriba’s rep sheet of memorable gatherings.