By Addison Oken

October 7th, 2022 was Beaver’s annual Harvest Fest celebration. The whole week leading up to the exciting games was filled with spirited fun, from ‘jersey day’ to ‘dress like Adam Sandler’, which concluded with Friday’s theme “whiteout”.  The first exciting occurrence was the announcement of the newly improved Beaver Athletics logo! Suspense filled the air when Athletic director Alex Gould sent an email earlier in the day with a p.s. at the bottom, “ALSO– please be on the lookout for one for one more email, coming soon, with a BIG surprise…” The entire school was on their toes about what this “big surprise” could be, before later receiving an email titled, “the secret is out” announcing the new logo. At the pep rally on Friday, the logo was all ready to go on new t-shirts that were thrown out into the crowd by student council and members of SBAC. Along with this, the pep rally had other fun amenities. For example, there was a massive musical chairs game where people from all four grades were chosen to play, and even Ms. Samson got involved! She came incredibly close to taking the win, but was beaten in the final round. This year’s Harvest Fest was definitely one to remember, and will be hard to beat in the coming years! On behalf of the beaver community; we can’t wait for DamJam!

In addition to the games, Harvest Fest was filled with many other exciting events. A homemade, grill oven pizza that was set up Friday night outside of the Athletic center! The pizza offered some much-needed sustenance to families, students, and athletes, and was 100% free. Once the clock hit 2 O’clock, the real festivities began. Beaver’s rival for the day was Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey. This school was very notable in sports in the EIL league, and all teams had to push themselves to beat them. 

The games started off strong with a tie for Girls JV Soccer, and a tough fight but unfortunate loss from Boys JV Soccer. Later,at 4 there was a strong win from Girls Varsity Soccer who won their game with a 1-0 shutout by Ellie Kenney. Unfortunately, Varsity Field Hockey fell to Portsmouth Abbey with a 6-0 loss. Students came and went the whole night, but the stands were packed by 6 o’clock. As the sun set and the lights came on, Boys Varsity Soccer made their way onto the field. With the Beaver mascot leading the team and the fog machine behind them, their walk-out will be remembered as one of the school’s most epic and significant. The Upper School President, Ian Travis, gave an inspiring short speech that hyped up not just the team, but the entire student section and all of the other supporters. With this energy and momentum, they were ready to start the game. 

The first half was a tricky one for the team. 2 goals were scored by Portsmouth, leading many players’ smiles and cheers to turn into anger and despair. By halftime, Beaver was not on the board and things were not looking so good for the infamous “under the lights game”. However, the team didn’t give up and kept fighting with all of the energy they had. By the final minute of the game, Beaver had made three incredible goals by Jack Strom, Colm McCarthy, and Onyi Emekanwokeji and Portsmouth had made no more. Their victory was celebrated by the whole school storming the field with joy once the final buzzer went off. This year’s Harvest Fest game was one of the best comebacks in Beaver’s Under the Lights history.