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Puxi Campus G8: One Rope, One Team — Grade 8 Tug-of-War Brings the Year Group Together

October 22, 2026

On the afternoon of Thursday, 15 October, the Grade 8 tug-of-war took place on the outdoor basketball court. All twelve Grade 8 classes fielded a team of sixteen — eight boys and eight girls each — and met head-to-head in a knockout bracket that ran from the quarter-finals to the final.


What makes tug-of-war unusual is that it records no individual result. Only a team's ability to apply its combined strength at exactly the same moment. The strongest competitor pulling half a beat early will cost the group ground, while a lighter student perfectly in step with everyone else can win the deciding inch. Pulling everyone back onto a shared rhythm was rather the point of the afternoon.


At each whistle, competitors planted their feet, leaned back as one and hauled in time with a single count, while classmates along the sidelines formed their own cheering ranks. A round was decided the moment a team pulled the center marker across its own line; if time expired with the rope still in play, the marker's lean decided the winner, and a rope hanging level earned thirty seconds of overtime. In the closer rounds the marker drifted back and forth for so long that the result stayed open until the final seconds. When the rounds were settled, Class 8(1) took first place, with Class 8(11) finishing second and Class 8(6) third. The day closed with a teachers-versus-students match — twelve teachers and eighteen students mixed into one squad to face the champions — which brought the crowd back to the line one more time before the year group headed upstairs.


When the last round ended, the scores stopped mattering quickly enough. What remained was the count they had called together, and classmates hauling each other back to their feet. Working side by side, the students experienced the value of teamwork and created a memorable moment to cherish from this semester.



















(Written by Xinyu Ma

Pictures by Grade 8 photography group

Reviewed by Wenyi Wu, Shiyu Wu)