TCU Sponsors Sports Day to Celebrate its 25th Birthday — Faculty Members, Staff and Students Participate Enthusiastically
On November 27, 2019, TCU sponsored Sports Day to celebrate its 25th birthday. It had rained for several days, yet the day turned out to be a sunshiny one. Faculty members, staff and students had fun participating in numerous competitions. For graduating seniors, these would be the last university-wide sports activities that they attended, so many of them cherished the opportunity to take part. The event started with the school anthem presented by TCU’s faculty members, staff and members of the Senior Citizens Group, followed by fun contests, tugs of war, track and field events, and a flash mob performance.
In addition to TCU’s faculty members, staff and students, others also attended, among them the dads and moms of Tzu-Cheng & Yi-Te Association, members of the Senior Citizens Group who take classes offered by the Continuing Education Center, and teenagers from Malaysia and Singapore, who came to TCU to learn Chinese. Each group employed creativity to express its uniqueness, trying to catch the eyes of judges and the audience. Learning Chinese and Japanese cultures is a daily routine for students of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature; hence, some students chose to perform dances wearing traditional Chinese clothes and Japanese kimonos. The most colorful group was the 260 dads and moms of Tzu-Cheng & Yi-Te Association. They wore colorful clothes with fruits on them, to show the audience their joy of choosing to be vegetarians.
President Ingrid Y Liu was with TCU before 1994, when it opened to the public. She said that most of our present students haven’t reached the age of 25, yet many dads and moms of Tzu-Cheng & Yi-Te Association have accompanied our students for over 25 years. TCU is our home, and if students want to know more about its history, they can chat with Tzu-Cheng & Yi-Te dads and moms, ask faculty members, or pay a visit to the University Archive. President Liu wished every team would exercise its team spirit, their members working with each other in the competition. She also joined other colleagues to take part in a fun contest.
Principal Helen Lee of Tzu Chi University Affiliated High School, Professor Cheng-Chuan Huang of National Cheng Chi University, CEO Amy Meures of the National Youth Leadership Council, R&D Director Zu-Chun Lin of Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology, Director Thomas Chien of the Office of Tzu Chi Education Foundation CEO, and President Chih-Hsien Wang of the TCU Alumni Association attended this event.
Fun contests energized all participants, and a total of fifteen teams energetically took part. Our colleagues focus on their work from Monday through Friday, yet on the Sports Day, they faced numerous contests, which were different from their regular work. They have built team spirit from working together in the workplace, and while facing difficulties in fun contests, they worked together and overcame their challenges, as they did in the workplace. No one anticipated the group with an average age over sixty to do so well in the fun contests, but the Senior Citizens Group did it by winning second and third places. Wu-Hsiu Lin is one of them. She didn’t receive a college education, but she had fun competing with college students.
The most exciting moment was watching the 100-meter dash finals. Jun-Sheng Zheng is a physical therapy student and he was TCU’s fastest male runner this year. This is his third consecutive year winning first place, and he is also the record holder for the men’s 100-meter dash. When feeling tired, Jun-Sheng chooses to run for a while. Every University Sports Day is a chance to evaluate how well he has been doing for the past twelve months. Unfortunately, he was unable to break his previous record this year, but he will keep on challenging himself in the future.
Attending the University’s sports activities was a quite unforgettable memory for many college students. Jin-Hua Yang is a public health senior and president of her class. She invited her classmates to take part in the Sports Day. All her peers answered her invitation, since they realized this would be their last chance, so they cherished the opportunity to join in.
A Chinese medicine freshman did push-ups before joining the contest, saying that doing push-ups is very helpful for warming him up. Chinese medicine students are very busy in their studies; consequently, many of them exercise regularly, and take part in sports activities, to alleviate their stress.
After attending the contests, many students participated in the hematopoietic stem cell blood test, wishing to someday become stem cell donors and help the needy. Many social work students also took part, wanting to give happiness to others and alleviate their sufferings.
