What does it take to cross five countries in seven days? According to three ASU students, just a whole lot of Red Bull.
After a week of traveling through Europe for Red Bull’s annual Can You Make It challenge, ASU’s representing team, the Wing Women, have finally returned home.
The Wing Women, comprised of Kappa Theta Alpha sorority members Caira Button, Katie Knoepker and Emily Poes, placed 12 out of 165 teams from around the world, finishing above even their own expectations.
“Getting chosen to participate was like winning the whole competition for us," Knoepker said. "We all thought, 'Let’s just do what we want.' We were all in it for the experience, we weren’t in it to win it. But placing in the top 10 percent was pretty great.”
The competition didn’t start off easy for the girls. When they started in Barcelona, they faced many complications.
“The first day was the absolute worst,” Knoepker said. “We got stuck in Barcelona for around eight hours and couldn’t get out of the city. The girls are sitting there crying in the train station and I’m thinking ‘we’ve got to get the hell out of here’.”
After making it out of Barcelona, the team got better at moving through their checkpoints. By the middle of the challenge, the Wing Women were in fourth place.
Part of what made the Wing Women so competitive was their edge in social points. With 48,650 points, the girls had some of the highest numbers in the category throughout the entire challenge.
Although the team improved with finding places to stay and getting means of transportation, hunger was always the biggest struggle.
“Being hungry (was the worst),” Poes said. “That got pretty bad for a few days, and it really never gets less awkward. We grew to understand that people’s responses would be this or that, and that if we didn’t do it, we don’t eat.”
Although their team faced struggles, Button said they didn’t seem to face as much trouble as the other teams.
“In comparison to other teams, we didn’t really have anything bad,” Button said. “Some all-girls teams were getting into some really scary situations, and some all-guys teams weren’t getting any help and hadn’t eaten for two days and had to sleep outside all week.”
The girls lived off of European Kebabs and bread rolls for the majority of the trip.
In regards to their favorite moment, the girls agreed on two moments that stood out. The first experience that came to their heads was journeying through a Swiss waterfall.
“In the video, you hear the guy yell, 'this is illegal, it’s very dangerous',” Poes said. “It was awesome though. It was great that we were all game for it and that we all did it.”
Knoepker said sleeping under the Eiffel Tower on Button’s birthday was one of the standout moments of the entire trip.
“When we had gotten to Paris, we were wandering around for a couple hours,” Button said. “We saw that the Eiffel Tower was sparkling which means it’s on the hour. I realized it was my birthday, and the timing was just perfect.”
The girls highlighted how much of a learning experience the challenge was for each of them.
“I think it taught us a lot about ourselves,” Poes said. “You never know how you’re going to act until you’re in a situation, and I’m just very impressed with how cohesive our group was.”
Knoepker said one of the biggest takeaways from their trip is how important it is to communicate with people.
“We learned to go to people. If you ever have a hope of achieving something, you have to get on a personal level with people,” Knoepker said.
Reach the reporter at Emmillma@asu.edu or follow @Millmania1 on Twitter.
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