Olympic Week has always been something Prep takes very seriously. It’s not just great competition – it’s a defining moment of each and every school year. Every year, grades are divided into individual Collegios and compete against one another in a mixture of games that creates great competition. The week is organized by Prep’s ASB Team, led by Senior Kenny Ouedraogo. Last year was a great success, but there are still many ideas that can make this year even better. Ouedraogo said that the Merlino Center was a big part of the success last year, and that it brought a sense of community between all the students. In addition, the Merlino Center hosted one of the more highly anticipated events, cornhole. To Kenny, “watching the pickleball games from the mezzanine with the teachers against two freshmen. It was really entertaining to watch, and they kept going back and forth.”
Over the course of Ouedraogo’s time at Prep, Olympic Week has grown larger and larger and has become a more integral part of Prep’s school spirit. He believes that this year is going to be the best one yet, as he said “we have been trying out some different games for some years, so during my sophomore year there was inflatable jousting, and I remembered we also played a game called Panther Pursuit, which was like Clue where you had a Scavenger Hunt, and you had to find all of the clues. I feel like all the like experimentation and some of the consistent games is perfect.”
But what has changed this year? There will be new and improved activities and building on what was successful last year is a top priority. Ouedraogo has seen the growth during his time at Prep. With this experience, he has been able to find what has and has not worked and fix those issues beautifully. Last year, Prep introduced Senior Trials, which ASB added to level the playing fields between the entire senior class and individual Collegios. In 2025 though, they’ve gone even further, with another goal of Ouedraogo’s being “to try to innovate and find some new games or see if there’s anything like you might want to cut out based on what we have the capacity to do.”
As this is Ouedraogo’s final year at Prep, he wants to leave a legacy of positive school spirit and lots of creativity. In addition, he wants to help future years of ASB to streamline some of the difficult processes. For instance, Ouedraogo created a shirt committee because “as you know, we get a lot of shirts every year, and specifically with Olympic Week, it takes up the whole ASB budget. And this is for shirts that people aren’t going to really wear again, so we’re researching that now to see if we can move to jerseys. And at the end of Olympic Week, we’ll get them back and store them away.”
It’s some of these things that ASB does to further improve our community. Every year has new ideas that help the experience even more. Or as Ouedraogo calls it, a “long investment and my hope is that the money can go towards things like the class budgets and potentially other clubs too while saving ASB money in the long run. “
