After an afternoon of fierce and fun competition, the Hippocrates Collegia took home first place in the 2025 USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Collegia Olympics.
Team Hippocrates secured seven top-five finishes among the 15 scoreable events, including first-place in tug-of-war, second-place in dodgeball and third-place in cup stacking, the spelling bee and the relay race.
“We had a pretty good squad this year. The team competed hard, we had a lot of fun in the process and it was great to win the cup this time around,” said Enrique Trevino, a third-year medical student in the Hippocrates collegia.
Since the first Collegia Olympics was held at the Morsani College of Medicine in 2019, the event has become an annual reprieve from the rigors of medical school. Described as “an old school field day” by participants, the friendly team-based competition provides an opportunity to strengthen the camaraderie and sense of community among students.
Students are placed into one of nine collegia during their first year of medical school, and since 2012 the Collegia Program has expanded into a non-residential learning community. The program strives to provide a supportive, reflective environment that helps students form professional identities, develop long-term personal relationships with peers, guide career planning and improve physical and emotional health.
Collegia teams can start earning points as soon as the newest class of medical students arrive in the Summer, and they can continue accumulating points throughout the year through activities at Professions of Health events and Homecoming Week, as well as Casino Night, Build-a-bull and the ping pong and pickleball tournaments.
At the competition’s main event in the Spring, points are awarded to the top finishers in each game. Scorable contests at the Olympics main event include:
· Relay race
· Dodgeball
· Volleyball
· Soccer
· Spelling bee
· Basketball
· Tug-of-war
· Water balloon toss
· Riddle relay
· Cornhole
· Obstacle course
· Mechanical bull riding
· Cup stacking
The newly-elected student leaders of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Collegia Program at the 2025 Collegia Olympics.
The event also symbolizes a “changing of the guard” in the collegia program’s student leadership, as new chairs and administrators were announced during the closing ceremonies. The group of first-year students will serve in their elected positions until the next collegia games in 2026.
Newly elected collegia board:
· President: Austin Erickson
· Director: Alexis Hernandez-Flores
· Events Coordinator: Mihir Kulkarni
· Treasurer: Carsen Langholm
· Bourne chair: Isabella Bustillos
· Debakey chair: Grace Silva
· Farmer chair: Andrew Bedard
· Galen chair: Quint Gfroerer
· Hippocrates chair: Leena Wajahat
· Koch chair: Carolyne Plansky
· Lower chair: Randy Aziz
· Osler chair: Vaishnavi Jayakumar
· Paracelsus chair: Alex Klug