The game ends and the Har-Ber Parker Wiser and his fellow juniors are victorious. All the sweat blood and tears of a ultimate frisbee tournament has resulted in their victory over cell groups from Bentonville, Springdale, and Rogers.

Cell groups are small groups of teenagers that meet at a house and have a Bible study led by a college leader from Fellowship Bible Church. All high school students are welcome to attend cell group. Each year Fellowship has a retreat for any high school student who wants to come called ‘Fall Retreat’. Springdale, Bentonville, and Rogers were the cities represented this year. For senior Evan Gonzalez it means more than just a weekend church event it’s about building relationships through various activities including a dance party.  

“Fall Retreat happens at a camp, this year it is at New Life Ranch, where we just do a bunch of fun stuff while celebrating and worshiping God. We have an ultimate Frisbee tournament for the guys and a Powder Puff tournament for the girls,” Gonzalez said.

For sophomore Mckenna Atkinson this is her first year at Fall Retreat. Although she has experienced “Chill Out” (like Fall Retreat but for the junior high students and it takes place in January) before and creates expectations going in.  

“I went to Chill Out last year and it’s kind of the same thing. It really just helps grow your cell groups closer together. I hope Fall Retreat is more fun and focuses more on getting our cell groups closer, because most of the time we don’t really focus on the God part so hopefully that’s going to be a lot better,” said Atkinson.

Building Godly relationships is very important to junior Parker Weiser and Fall Retreat really helps in doing that.

“Every day you’re given some type of talk with your cabin and you just get to talk and really focus in on what the leaders have to say and then you can just build your relationship through there,” Weiser said.

There is also something other than relationships that you can take away from Fall Retreat, which Gonzalez knows from past retreats.

“I really like the dance party where we dress up in whatever the theme is, and just hang out and go crazy,” said Gonzalez.  

Even though this year was marred by the norovirus and food poisoning it was still a lot of fun. There is no better way to start off the school year then having fall retreat according to Gonzalez

“I’ve been to Fall Retreat two other times and each time it just gets us fired up for the school year and gets us to be able to hangout with  other cities and the girls and guys in other grades,” said Gonzalez.