Catholic Campus Ministries at St. Albert the Great earned first overall in the one-night building competition with their entry “A work in progress reconstruction of Notre Dame with a soldier taking a knee to show reverence.” (Michigan Technological University Photo)

HOUGHTON — The campus of Michigan Technological University and the communities of Houghton, Hancock and Chassell are the homes for multiple snow statues in recent days.

Wednesday evening into Thursday morning saw the traditional “all nighter” when the 16 entries in the month-long competition put the finishing touches or their massive masterpieces, while the 71 contestants in the One-night competition frantically tried to transform a pile of snow into a statue in just a few hours.

Winter Carnival is put on by Blue Key Honor Society. This year’s theme is “Dragons, Knights & Legendary Sights.”

The entries into this year’s statue compeitions were so numerous the University initially did not have enough space for all of the one-nighter entries. After some reconfiguring by the engineers however, the layout was altered to accommodate all of the teams.

The return of more traditional winter weather is credited with increasing the interest in statue building this year.

Blue Key Statue Chair Brynn Santi said during last year’s Carnival, Blue Key members were tried to come up with the next year’s theme during some downtime.

“We actually were really bored during last year’s all-nighter, and the statues committee came up with it,” Santi said. “So we just wrote down a bunch of random things that could be ideas for next year’s carnival, and we then voted on them in a later meeting.”

The month long projects were constructed by sororities, fraternities and other student organizations. The lion’s share of construction was completed prior to the all-nighter so Wednesday night mostly consisted of the final details.

While all contestants were competing under the same theme, how they interpreted it was vastly different.

Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority and Sigma Tau Gamma joined together to build a Gothic themed castle with a dragon skeleton laying before it. They had split into multiple teams when constructing the sculpture and would work eight hours a week per person in the group. The castle was adorned with crosses crafted from ice and the fine details of the dragon including its spikes and teeth which made with icicles, and an ice sword imbedded into its skull.

Alpha Gam Statue Chair Lucy Reznich said the group was in high spirits with a return to more traditional weather.

“Last year was pretty tough morale wise,” she said. “We definitely love seeing the snow this year and we love being out here.”

Beta Sigma Theta partnered up with Delta Phi Epsilon to construct a medieval and fantastical courtyard complete with a well, fountain and archway.

Beta Sigma Theta Special Events Chair Drew Edick shared what birthed the idea of a courtyard.

“So our thought process was kind of with the medieval-like theme,” Edick said. “I really liked the idea of a magical courtyard because whenever you read a fantasy book or anything like that, my favorite part of them has always been castles they have and this picture in your head. I really wanted to be able to bring what I picture in my head to come to life.”

While the theme of Tau Kappa Epsilon was kept close to the vest, it was seemingly themed after the Harry Potter franchise with the Hogwarts castle and other images associated with the franchise.

Charlie Magnus said and his fraternity brothers were proud to participate in this Michigan Tech tradition.

“This has been a tradition since we’ve been founded,” he said. “We go big every year and try to win, but having the people come out the front and just say, ‘Wow,’ and ‘what a great statue,’ that’s honestly what I do it for. All of our alumni come up and it’s great to see the community come out and just appreciate it and be truly awed.”

The Army Cops of Engineers castle was built by the joint team of the Army and Air Force ROTC. At the foot of the castle lies a catapult and dragon. While the structure was not too difficult in Cadet Battalion Commander Daniel Staelgraeve’s opinion, he said it did come with challenges. “It’s one of the bigger ones that’s kind of in the recent memory of the two ROTC programs,” he said. “So with myself being a fourth year, this is definitely the biggest statue we’ve made so far. So that’s pretty cool to see.”

Sigma Phi Epsilon and Delta Zeta’s entry had a castle wall with a drawbridge and a giant ogre guarding it. Knights were manning the wall. Sigma Phi Epsilon Statue Co Chair Ty Sheets believed their project to be one of the more unique entries. “We have a drawbridge with ropes,” he said. “We’re going to slush those so they look like snow; it’s the only one on campus that I know of that’s going to be doing that.”

The smaller one-nighter entries littered the entirety of the campus with most in the central traffic areas, with a couple dozen lying along the sidewalks encompassing the campus. There were multiple designs including Godzilla attacking a train, a mermaid, a moose, an octopus and more.

East McNair’s second floor known as Bastille made a model of the French Bastille prison along with a guillotine. The group said the idea seemed obvious, given the carnival’s theme and the name of the area of the dorms which they resided. Bastille resident Donovin Bashi said that things were going smoothly with the arrival of the snow truck, which had placed it in a spot which had the group hardly needed to fill the area. However it came with a catch. “Because we have the snow truck dump it in, the snow’s mostly in chunks,” he said. “So every now and then a part about yay big will just come straight out of it. You gain time somewhere and you lose it somewhere else.”

Christian group Cru built a large depiction of the Leviathan from the Old Testament Book of Job. The Leviathan was made to be a serpentine monster with a lot of fine detail with Cru adding icicles for fangs. Cru’s Evan Pohl said crafting the Leviathan’s head was a challenge. “We’re trying to make it look more Dragon or serpent of worm like,” Pohl said.

“But we can get some jagged edges in there and figure out how to make it look more like a dragon or dinosaur that that’d be the best.”

A complete list of all statue winners is available on Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival website.