Photo by Justin Allardyce Knight

It was a very chilly spring morning when seniors and their hoops lined up on Tupelo Lane this year, but the cold didn’t affect their enthusiasm—in fact, they seemed to be warmed by sheer class pride (and some travel mugs of coffee). “2-0-1-6 Wellesley Rah, 2-0-1-6 Wellesley! Our red-hot heat just can’t be beat, 2-0-1-6 Wellesley!” they cheered. After a brief set of instructions from Acting Dean of Students Adele Wolfson, the students flew down the lane, graduation robes flapping, like a colony of uncoordinated but determined bats.

This year’s Hooprolling winner, Ari Rodriguez ’16, was extremely determined. “You gotta want it to win it, and I wanted it the most because I’m irrationally competitive!” she wrote on her Instagram account after winning the race, along with a photo of herself triumphantly holding her hoop aloft. Rodriguez, a women’s and gender studies major from Santa Barbara, Calif., is a devoted member of the rugby club, which may have contributed to her win.

According to Wellesley lore, the winner of Hooprolling will be the first in the class to achieve happiness and success, however she defines it. What might that look like for Rodriguez? “Ideally, I’d like to work to help involve girls in STEM fields, before applying to a graduate program in women’s/gender/feminist studies,” she says.