From February 26th to March 2nd Grace Zorich and Sawyer Zeck competed in the competition for Senior Survivor hosted by the MHS student council. In the weeks leading up to the competition, they had to raise as much money as they could for their charity of choice. After making enough money to get into the final competition, they spent all week at school, competing in various mental and physical challenges together.

Unlike some of the other pairs in this competition, the decision to be partners came easily to Grace and Sawyer.

“He’s my boyfriend. So obviously we work well together and I enjoy spending time with him, ” said Grace.

The charity they chose to fundraise for was Sleep In Heavenly Peace, a non-profit based out of Muscatine that works to build beds for kids who don’t have them. A part of their choice came from the charity being newer than the others that were chosen.

Grace said, “It started up this summer so it was nice kind of helping them get running and teaching people about what it was.”

Sawyer added to this by saying, “I think this week made us more thankful that we chose our charity since we did sleep without a bed. Even for a week that was horrible, so I can’t even imagine doing that every single day.”

The decision to be involved in Senior Survivor for Grace partially came from the memories she had of one of these local charities.

“My mom worked at a nonprofit and I remember two Senior Survivors fundraising for that charity and just how much it helped them out,” she said.

On the other hand, Sawyer never really felt that connected to it, but still decided to join once he got closer to his Senior year.

“When I was actually there at the challenges last year it looked really fun,” he said.

Despite also experiencing the fun he saw last year, they also struggled a bit with some of the challenges. Most of it from being so sleep-deprived and hungry.

“We would always have to be like this isn’t that big of a deal we just need to calm down,” said Grace.

Then Sawyer added, “Yeah, I definitely got pressed a couple of times when I felt like she threw a challenge, but in the end it was fine”

In the end, even though they had some difficulties during the challenges, they seemed to have had a great time and even won first place in the competition and for the amount of money they raised for Sleep In Heavenly Peace.

“It was like a big sleepover…besides like us starving,” said Grace.