IUPUI Regatta Moved to Military Park for 10th Anniversary

On Saturday, Sept. 22, IUPUI hosted its 10th annual Regatta for the first time in Military Park.

 “This year we moved from being directly on the canal to being in Military Park,” IUPUI senior Sandy Nyguen said.“It is our 10th year anniversary and we wanted to do something bigger and different. It turned out really great actually. Everything is in one general area and you can see all of the other vendors and the festival area,”Nyguen said.

As well as the location being different, the canoe race itself took a different path and gave the contestants more room to compete.

“The structure of the race changed, we moved from a heat style to a wave style,” senior Thatch Gbur said. “Instead of having six to eight boats going at once we have one boat going every minute. It is always continuous action on the canal, nonstop throughout the race,” Gbur said.

With all of the events being held in Military Park close to the canal gave students and Indianapolis residents a better chance to be connected to IUPUI.

“Since everything it so centralized this year in Military Park I feel like a lot more people are involved, which is really nice to see because everything is so much closer together,” senior Morgan Doucleff said.“Everyone really went all out this year. All of the booths are really exciting, all the rowers have really cool outfits and I think with everyone being excited this year makes the race better,”Doucleff added.

With incorporating a main stage for live band performances, dance groups, rappers and even a dog costume contest was provided for the audience.

  “[Xiphos Corps], practiced 14 hours a week for our dances during the Regatta. It was scary at first to dance in front of everyone but I ended up having a lot of fun,” freshman,Duyen Luc said.

Since this is the Regatta’s 10th anniversary, people working on the Regatta committee wanted to make this year more memorable. Every year IUPUI gives out a Regatta scholarship, open to any student to apply.

“We have been fortunate for the growth of the Regatta, it has allowed us to reward the first 10 Stefan Davis Regatta scholarships in 2015. This year we honor our fourth cohort of Davis IUPUI Regatta recipients. We were lucky enough this year to reward another 10 students for their academic achievement,” Executive Director of the IUPUI office of Alumni Relations, Stefan Davis said.