New club offers a competitive study break for students

Written By Devin Wolthuizen

The newest club on the University of Sioux Falls Campus is called The Chutes and Ladders League.  Many of today’s students can think back and recall that they played this game as a child, so some are curious as to what sparked this idea for a club.  League President, Cale Engelkes, says that he and his friends were bored one day during quarantine in the spring of 2020 and decided to play a game of chutes and ladders.  After a night of competitive play with friends from home, Engelkes says that he thought to himself, “You know what?  I could make this a club at USF and keep doing this, and that’s basically what happened.”

The league meets every Wednesday night at 7:00p.m. in Cooper’s Café.  All students and faculty are welcome to join in and play for the league’s traveling trophy, a ceramic goose that the league calls “Mother Goose”.  Each week, the winner keeps Mother Goose with them until the next Wednesday, when they have the chance to play for the right to keep it again.  Freshman and founding member of the league, Court Anderson, says that the group knew after week one that they needed to get a trophy.  So a small group went to a local thrift shop and looked through the knick knacks, “… Mother Goose was sitting right there on the shelf looking at us, and it was five dollars and it was the best five dollars spent.”

If you’re interested in learning more about the Chutes and Ladders League, you can check them out on Instagram @usfchutesandladders.