Throughout the year, you can see any number of students participate in a wide variety of extreme campus sports.

With winter you get the death-defying ice walk. Students may choose to tackle this activity with any number of footwear, common choices being snow boots or hiking boots. My personal favorite for viewing entertainment: suede booties with zero traction. The beauty of this sport? The equipment you use is of no consequence, leaving a person’s successes up to pure, raw talent. That talent being their ability to balance and catch themselves from near-butt-on-ground experiences.

Another great campus extreme sport is flowy clothes on a windy day. Whether it’s a dress, a loose blouse or baggy basketball shorts, you run the risk of that shit flying up and showing the entire world your blinding, pale, squishy parts.

But the most extreme of campus extreme sports, in my humble opinion, is the bring-your-own beverage, ceramic mug edition. This is a feat of true talent, and one I have never mastered.

I was first exposed to this mind-boggling practice my freshman year, when one of my good friends showed up to a news meeting with a ceramic Starbucks mug, filled to the brim with green tea (tea bag included). I asked her where she got the tea, and she said she brought it from her dorm. Granted, she lived in Wilmer Davis, so she didn’t have to go too far, but I was still stunned.

Then I noticed a lot of travel mugs that are ceramic. At least they had a lid, but still, I believe we are all far too clumsy to carry around something so fragile, if the coffee-covered floors of every building are any indication of our walking-and-drinking abilities.

And just on Monday, I saw the most recent athlete in this year’s bring-your-own beverage competition. A young woman was walking down the hill by Bryan Hall, sipping from a huge, round mug. And it didn’t have an easy handle, either. It was one of those handles only two fingers can fit in, and curved just so that it tilts easily. And there she walks, weaving between people with her mug, sipping away, crushing it like a badass.

I must say, I cannot decide what is the most horrifying of the many implications of spilling your beverage: covering yourself in boiling-hot liquid, staining your clothes with said liquid, breaking your favorite ceramic mug, or wasting that oh-so-precious nectar we call caffeinated beverages.

To all you extreme-sporters out there this 2017-2018 season: I wish you luck as the weather turns wicked. But I can’t guarantee I won’t laugh if you fail; but don’t worry, karma’s a bitch and I’m sure to fall, too.

Jennifer Ladwig is a senior multimedia journalism major from Washougal. She can be contacted at [email protected].