OUTLOOK - If everything was found to be done in working order and the results come back clean as a whistle, then the Home of the Blues just may turn out to be the Home of a Guinness World Record.
The gymnasium of Outlook High School was a flurry of activity on Wednesday morning, February 9 as the entire student body got involved in a game of Four Corners. But this wasn't just for fun and games, as the Grade 9 Career Education class was looking to break a Guinness World Record for having the largest turnout for the game.
The previous record was established on October 17, 2012 when a GAP Europe store in Warminster, UK played Four Corners with 261 participants. The game is played by having one person be "it" and he/she stands in the middle of a room. They close their eyes and begin a countdown from ten while everyone else playing the game goes to one of four corners in the room. When the countdown is finished, the person announces the number of one of the corners, and each person in that corner is eliminated. This continues until one person is left.
As the entire student body of OHS filled the gym, the game soon got underway as the kids all chose their respective corners, which were numbered. Serving as the blind countdown participant was Grade 8 student Addisyn Vanghel, who also broke down the rules and explained what the school was trying to accomplish with the game.
Helping the school carry out such a task were a number of people, including eight people who were situated on the stage to serve as stewards, watching the game intently to make sure no rules were broken and that everything was turning out as it should.
From there, the game got underway and the gym became the site of OHS attempting to carve a place in history. The students looked to be having a blast being taken out of class in order to try and set a record for their school, and when all was said and done, the winner of potentially the largest game of Four Corners to be played was Grade 8 student Sawyer Spence.
Vanghel enjoyed being out there with her classmates, trying to help her school establish a new world record.
"I did, but I was pretty scared and so I stumbled over a few words, but once I got into it, it was really fun," she said.
In her mind, everything turned out the way it was supposed to.
"I feel that it turned out just how we planned it to turn out," said Addisyn. "Lots of people came and it was really fun."
Teacher Keith Theoret touched on how the class determined that this was something they wanted to pursue.
"The Grade 9's needed to do a community project as part of their Career curriculum, and so they decided to do a community within the school, and so they decided that a Guinness World Record was what they wanted to break," he said. "They worked together to figure out which record they wanted to break, and it came down to two, and Four Corners was the winner."
With 272 people taking part in Outlook's game, Keith said he enjoyed how it all turned out.
"It was great," he said. "The kids were excited about it, and everybody participated honestly in it. I think it went really well."
So now, things become a bit of a waiting game as OHS works to establish that their record attempt was legitimate and then await a response from the people at Guinness World Records.
"There are several criteria that we have to show for evidence that we completed it," explained Theoret. "This includes video evidence, and we also have to have witness statements that weren't part of the organization. Thanks go out to the parents and grandparents who came in to be our stewards. We also had two witnesses in Grade 5 teachers from OES, so thanks go out to them. We're also going to have to submit various criteria, there are actually seven or eight things you have to submit to guarantee that what you did was accurate and legit."
