The “Bad Taste” Badminton Tournament Kicks Off a Year Full of Boarding School Activities

For the 2019–2020 school year, the Boarding School Council has set some goals for the boarding school community: Throughout the year, activities for the entire Steinmühlen community will take place on boarding school weekends.

The Bad-Taste badminton tournament, which took place for the second time at Steinmühle Boarding School this weekend, kicked off the recreational program. The teams were drawn by lot in advance to ensure the fairest possible competition and some wild (costume) combinations.

From 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., the Steinmühlen students and teachers, dressed in wild costumes, fought fiercely for first through third place. In the eight groups, students battled it out in the preliminary rounds amid loud cheering in the gym to advance to the finals.

In the end, Martin Treml from the Bremerhaus, together with his teammate and house director Francine Olschewski, prevailed in the final match against young Elizabeth Förster from the Biohaus and Michel Hermens, the director of the Mühlenhaus. Students Yuhe Lin and Maxim Dyck took third place.

Since the tournament’s theme was “Bad Taste,” prizes were of course awarded accordingly: Johannes Tetzner won with his outfit consisting of sunglasses, a stuffed animal tied around his waist, a bicycle helmet worn upside down, and colorful socks (all of which he wore consistently even during the games), a Steinmühlen sweater—just like Felix Müller, who strolled around the hall dressed as an archery-shooting cowboy butcher.

However, to ensure that everyone had a chance to win a prize, additional participant prizes were drawn at the end: One team was delighted to learn that they wouldn’t have to attend any extracurricular activities for the coming week, while another team will have their entire menu request fulfilled for Wednesday’s dinner night. And the third team drawn in the raffle gets to take it easy at school: they won’t have to go to the study hall for a whole week.

And the boarding school council is already planning its next event: Takeshi’s Castle, the well-known Japanese game show in which contestants had to navigate funny—and sometimes insurmountable—obstacles. This real-life version of a platformer video game is now set to be brought back to life in the gym at Steinmühle Boarding School.