The only thing louder than the exasperated grunts of the mud-covered Tug participants was the piercing screams of the crowd, cheering on their teams to a hopeful victory.

Tug Day— one of the last Greek Week events— took place at the Agricultural Exposition Center last Friday at 2 p.m. 

Tug is designed as a single-elimination tournament with eight-member teams who are trained and equipped with the skills to pull their opposition to their side of the “pit.” 

This competition is not the typical tug of war childhood game. Teams have dedicated months of practice to perfect their strategies and their ‘tugging’ technique.

Madeline “Maddie” Goodwill, Atlanta sophomore, member of Phi Mu sorority, and co-chair of Tug, said her sorority had been intensely training for this event for approximately three months. 

“The only trouble we really faced during training was the snow week,” Goodwill said. “It’s really hard to go out and dig holes in the snow.” 

Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity however, never practiced as a team until they faced Kappa Alpha Order fraternity in their first round of competition. 

According to SAE Tug Chair Madison Williams, six members of their tug team dropped out the morning of the competition.

“We had a makeshift team that came out and did us well,” Williams said. “This is the first victory for any SAE tug team, so we are proud accomplishing that for our fraternity.”

Other chapters dedicate more of their time in preparation for the event.

Members of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity said they paired up with Phi Mu months ago to practice for this competition. 

Chase “Bubba” Brown, anchor for ATO, has been on the ropes for three years and is stilling awaiting a victory. 

“We have been training for approximately three months mostly with Phi Mu sorority,” Brown said. “We practice our cadences, calls and technique to make sure they are the best they can be before competition day.”

For the Chi Omega chapter, being a part of Tug was about more than winning the entire event.

“Honestly we just wanted to win one pull, so if we can keep going that’ll be great, but it’s not something that we expect. We just like to have a good time and represent Chi Omega well,” said Keeley Klutts, Tug chair for the Chi Os. 

This year Alpha Gamma Delta won the sorority competition over Alpha Delta Pi. 

AGD’s Tug Chair Meghan McGuirk accredited its win to their team unison.

“This is one of those things that if you slack off it’s not just on you, you hurt your sisters,” McGuirk said. “We really focus on pulling for each other because that’s the whole reason we are here.”

On the fraterntiy side, Alpha Gamma Rho won the fraternity Tug competition for the second year in a row. 

Kyle Howard, tug chair for AGR, said it was mandatory for every chapter member to attend tug practice.

“We take Tug very seriously, we put so much work into it and we put all of our hearts into it,” Howard said. “It just makes it a whole lot sweeter that we won it together as a chapter, with the people on and off the rope.”

Greek Week 2015 ended with the Convocation Ceremony held at the Knicely Conference Center on Sunday, April 26 at 5 p.m.

An assortment of awards are given to Greek individual members and chapters at the ceremony. Kappa Delta sorority and Phi Delta Theta fraternity took home the overall Greek Week Winners awards this year.