Ready or Not?: A behind the scenes recap of E-ntrams

The past week was filled with fun and exciting activities hosted by the Student Government (SG), with batches across the whole MGC New Life high school competing to be crowned the champion of this year’s E-ntramurals. Let’s take a recap of last week’s events and see it through the eyes of the officers who organized these for the student body. Ready or not, let’s begin!

Entitled E-ntrams: Ready or Not, the SG hosted the annual intramurals from March 28 to March 31, 2022, through Zoom and Discord. A master scoreboard was introduced, wherein all batches worked together to collect points through winning and participating in the games. Batch Olive led the scoreboard with 53 points, making it the largest margin among all the batches. Earning 30 points, Berea came in second, while Damascus settled for third with 26 points.

“Majority of the video games used in last year’s E-ntrams were actually recycled in this year’s event, except for Genshin Impact and Chess. However, more activities were added into the picture such as the Challenge Accepted and Valorant Minigame, where batches were given the chance to gain more points in the master scoreboard [through various options],” explained Aaron Lee, the SG Treasurer and E-ntrams committee head.

Opening this year’s games, Trivia Murder Party 2 was hosted on the first day, with batch Zion topping the scoreboard. Two rounds were played, and participants and officers alike shared laughs and gained new knowledge through the trivia questions in the game.

Patmos and Olive were leading after the first round of Valorant, with Patmos claiming first place. Olive finished second, while Damascus and Berea placed third and fourth, respectively. “Round-robin was a good choice for the bracket system because it allowed all batches to equally play all 6 rounds. G10 vs G11 games were always so close and intense,” Elijah Tongco, Berea Level Rep and the Valorant officer-in-charge (OIC), shared.

Qualifying rounds for Minecraft Bedwars were on day two, while the final rounds were on the last day. Batch Nazareth won the tournament, while Olive placed second and Berea took third place.

Participating batches were required to submit a recording of the Oceanid challenge, which was live-streamed on day three and followed by Sayu Racing. Batch Zion took the win, and Olive and Damascus placed second and third, respectively.

“I mostly learned how to choose which activities work for Genshin. Since it isn’t a player vs. player game, the group of officers [who] was brainstorming ideas for the events with me mostly thought of the things that were essentially the memes of the Genshin impact community, which worked. My highlights would be watching the players. The screaming, the laughing, and the competitive rambling were all really nice to see as the event played out,” shared Janelle Lim, the SG Auditor and Genshin OIC.

Last but not the least, chess matches were distributed between day two and the last day. Batch Patmos ended up clinching first place, while Damascus took second and Zion placed third.

“There are always things to improve on, such as the logistics of how people join lobbies, scheduling the games so players won't be pressed for time, and improving our system to make sure the games play out fairly. Gaming events are something that the SG only started hosting over the pandemic, so we hope to continue to improve as we (hopefully) have more of these activities,” said Trei Ngo, the SG President and Minecraft OIC.

Despite the stress planning the event caused and some problems such as miscommunication and scheduling, the event turned out to be successful. Seeing the batches being competitive, enjoying playing together, and using this event as a means to socialize with their schoolmates made everything worth it. After all, the objective of E-ntrams is to bring batches together, and it was achieved – unity was revived once again.