The tower wobbles, the bricks shift, and everyone holds their breath, but with steady hands the members of the newly created Jenga club make their move. Juniors Sam Conley and Jon Worley recently decided to make one of their favorite childhood games into an after-school club.

In its first year, the club already has eight members, and they hope to grow in quality rather than quantity. “We only want the best Jenga players, ones that can really make an impact on the game play,” said co-creator Conley.

The club began in the room of history teacher Ms. Megan Kern. “We would always play Jenga whenever we had extra time in class, and it just evolved from there,” said creator Worley.

The members, meeting every Monday after school, not only compete against each other in the normal version of the game, but as well as many complex variations of the game. “One of the games we created involves stacking two Jenga towers on top of each other. Doing that will make the tower more wobbly and easier to fall down,” said Worley.

Although the game is usually played in a 1 v.1 format, the club members will also play against each other in different teams, either in 2 v. 2, 4 v. 4. “For one of our games we plan to have teams of two, where both members of the team have to pull out a Jenga brick at the same time,” said Worley.

Obviously with such an intensified form of game play, the emotions run high and people begin to get angry. “It gets pretty intense,” said junior Ned Meeker.

For those students don’t know the game of Jenga, it is both a mental and physical game that consists of a tower made up of 18 layers of wooden bricks. Each participant must take a brick out of the tower and place it at the top of the tower, the player that causes the whole tower to fall is deemed the loser.