Hyper Sports was a pretty weird game. It combined seven seemingly random summer Olympic events into one competition: freestyle swimming, skeet shooting, long horse, archery, triple jump, weightlifting, and pole vault. The game was simple to play and incredibly fun. Kunz, Linde, and I were immediately hooked. But Hyper Sports was not for the faint of heart. Sure, swimming was child's play, and skeet shooting wasn't much of a challenge. Long horse only took a little time to master, and archery became quite doable after a fair amount of practice. But triple jump was a tough nut to crack. As I recall it took us several weeks to get past triple jump. I remember having to go online and find advice about the optimal launch angle to hit for each jump. Oddly enough, weightlifting never was much of an obstacle for us. But then there was pole vault. Pole vault crushed your soul. The end of the game was in sight, but pole vault simply taunted us as it defeated us again and again and again.
Kunz, Linde, and I loved Hyper Sports night. We looked forward to it. We bonded over it. Playing a few rounds while switching off between events made us so happy. But we knew that we wouldn't be truly satisfied until we conquered pole vault. A pretty decent amount of time passed. We started playing the game pretty early during our freshman cross country season. Well into our freshman track season and maybe even into our sophomore year, we hadn't beaten pole vault. But then, one night, there was magic. I took yet another crack at pole vault. I mashed the buttons quickly enough and at just the right time to clear the bar. Our little pixelated guy fell to the mat below. We had done it. We had finished Hyper Sports. We cheered and fist pumped and high fived like we had actually won something. Hyper Sports was truly our game now.
The three of us kept playing Hyper Sports after that first triumph; after all, we couldn't break tradition. The game really didn't become any less fun; if anything we relaxed and goofed around with it even more. We got better and better at the various events, working together to do things like set a new skeet shooting high score or best weightlifting mark. All told, in dozens of games of Hyper Sports throughout our college careers, I think we beat pole vault like three or four times. But one of those times everything clicked, and we managed to break the game's pole vault record, too. Hyper Sports may have been a silly pre-meet tradition, but those good times are forever burned in my memory.
BMH
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