The Bethel College men’s soccer team set a world record for the longest futsal game ever played. The record, which was 32 hours and 20 minutes previously, was broken around 8 Monday night. The athletes then continued to play until 11 p.m., possibly setting the new record at 35 hours. The team will have to wait for confirmation on the actual time from Guinness World Records.
“At the beginning it was hard because it seemed like forever,” said freshman Cesar Ontiveros. When asked what was most difficult, Ontiveros smiled. “The whole 35 hours.” The players participated in shifts of three hours, and planned to sleep in the hours in which they weren’t playing. It wasn’t always that easy, though, said Ryan Needs, a junior at Bethel. “Between midnight and 6 a.m. a lot of us crashed. A lot of us didn’t have sleep,” he admitted. To him, however, the best part about the experience was the camaraderie. “We’re all friends and come from different places,” Needs said, “We’re all friends forever.”Print