This year’s Spring Weekend and Welcome to Wheaton Day began with one of Wheaton College’s most cherished traditions: the Head of the Peacock Pond boat race. The race consisted of student teams that work together to build and design their own boats. The team’s goal is to row their homemade boats as fast as possible to a designated point on the lake and back safely to the dock. This year’s winners (in order of ranking) were Behemoth, Race Boat and Non-Athletic Regular People (NARP) Nation.
“To the Outdoors house, Head of the Peacock Pond is an important race that we always prepare for.” said Dmitri Korin ’20, who was one of the students working on Behemoth, the boat designed by Outdoors house and winner of the race. “I would say that the win almost always comes from the seniors’ motivation to end their last Head of the Peacock Pond with another win for the house. I’m glad we won and a special thanks to housemates Gus, Noah and Lyle for an amazing rudder,” said Korin.
“The Head of the Peacock Pond race is one of Wheaton’s greatest traditions and I’ve been lucky to be part of a wonderful community that’s dominated year after year, “ said Molly King ’19, also a part of the Outdoors House team. She noted that “the competition was better than ever and I was highly impressed by all of the boats.”
Margaret Shields ’19, who worked on NARP Nation, said, “Outdoors [House] was expecting to be in the final against us so there was some rivalry there before the race. We were really hoping to beat them so when our boat sank, we were upset.” Shields then went on to describe that it had only been NARP Nation’s first year doing the race. “It was really fun to see the Wheaton community come together for such a fun tradition and be on the inside of the fence in the action for the first time.” said Shields.
The Head of the Peacock will continue on to be one of Wheaton’s most cherished traditions. Though there are victors of the race, every participant gets to enjoy the competition challenges that the race brings.