Nathaniel Arnold
It’s a little hard to believe that the 2026 YAG is over, and not only because it was the longest YAG to date, clocking in at 70 hours, up from a historic norm of about 44. It also was an event born in not a little uncertainty, as Iranian missiles began falling over my temporary home two weeks after I turned on registration! Fancy UAE air defenses gratefully kept me out of any particularly acute danger, but I couldn’t help but wonder constantly what, exactly, the future held, for me, or for the YAG. So it feels like a big change to be looking at the 2026 YAG in the rearview mirror, rather than looking anxiously into the future. Laus Deo.
There was plenty new this year, starting with about 50% of our attendees, one of our highest ratios of YAG newbies yet. It was also something like our third-smallest YAG ever, at 70-ish people. A big chunk of regular visitors has “graduated” š, we might say, in the last year or two. A great problem to have! As is usually the case, both seasoned attendees and un-seasoned (though not bland) ones mixed fluidly and easily. One of the most satisfying things about running the YAG is seeing new people who just got off the plane getting incorporated into friend groups both new and old, right on the very first day.
I could be wrong about this, but in my opinion, “hey, I’m ____, what’s your name?” is one of the better introductions there is, and I personally hate taking that away from people by putting everyone’s name on a name tag. So I don’t; like last year, we just wrote random personal attributes on our name tags and mixed them up among all the attendees. Unlike last year, I forgot to really explain the point of the exercise ā trading the nameless tags to get the one you received to its proper owner ā so it wasn’t as fruitful as before. My fault. But we did have fun with our ad-lib opening exercise, for which you can see Agustin Bayer and (half of) Simon Petrizzi serving as very helpful microphone ushers in the above photo. I sort of kind of invented this game (at least the YAG version) and even I get confused who’s supposed to have a microphone, I can’t believe those two kept it straight the whole time with no help from me.
Afterwards, we went to Mass, and after that had a delicious pizza dinner. It’s a funny thing; last year, we forgot to pick up the salad we had ordered, but no one said anything at all about having only pizza on offer. This year, we remembered the salad, and much to my surprise, and certainly with no help from me, all the salad was polished off in the blink of an eye. Sometimes desire is just about what happens to be in front of you, I guess.
I think we got to our campground for the bonfire earlier than any YAG in recent memory, and that was after saying the rosary in church. So efficient! I’m still trying to live down keeping everyone at church till 10pm or something a few years ago and I felt like I made some progress.
When the alarm goes off on Saturday morning to get up and ready for Mass, it always does feel like “already?” But it’s nothing we can’t handle. š³
A really unique thing we did this year is have a men’s speaker and a women’s speaker on Saturday. The wonderful and vivacious couple Dr. and Mrs. Dan Stanislawski gave scintillating talks on dopamine (really) and understanding your vocation, respectively. I obviously was only at one talk, but both received great reviews!
After saying the rosary in church, we took off for a delicious š¤ lunch at the retreat center.
Then it was time for this:
Last year we had an awesome sip-and-paint session with a talented artist-attendee. As she was tied up for this YAG (i.e. engaged), we had to look elsewhere for entertainment and engagement. So we had trivia:
The people in this pic using their phones are texting answers to the mods, not cheating, I want to clarify. Our handmade and extremely diverse questions hopefully gave everyone a chance to show off their specialized knowledge. Father McKenna showed up and joined a random team which happened to have a lot of specialized knowledge, and they cruised to a landslide victory.
After dinner, it was time to dance!
Agustin Bayer got everyone warmed up with some fun traditional group dances, a new addition to the usual roster, which was great and inclusive way to get everyone moving before continuing on to the square dance and waltz.
Speaking of the square dance:
And the waltz:
Sunday started with High Mass, as always, and was followed by a great talk by Father McKenna, about jettisoning the “the whole world is against me” mindset.
Though first we herded everyone into what I think is one of our most-quickly-arranged group photos yet. Our usual super profesh photographer was out of town š„² , so we settled for a good iPhone.
Thus would have ended the entire YAG, except that this YAG still had an entire day left, at least for about half the attendees. People struck out on their own for a hew hours for dinner and activities:
And then re-congregated for all kinds of fun back at the dorms until we got tired.
On Monday morning, about half of the half of the remaining people made their way to one of suburban Cincinnati’s biggest attractions, the unbelievably Byzantine Jungle Jim’s international supermarket. But we weren’t just regular shoppers/gawkers, rather, we got the VIP treatment at the events center upstairs from the main store.
Our first activity was this “veggie car racing” that you might have heard about and wondered about beforehand. Well, this is what it actually looked like:
Then after a delicious fajita-bar lunch, we set out on a scavenger hunt of the cavernous store itself, clipboards in hand. But we were running against a clock, so I think we may have under too much pressure to take many pictures.
And then and only then did the YAG officially wind down, coincidentally restoring the old tradition of ending in Fairfield, OH, which used to happen at the bowling alley.
As usual I feel so much gratitude not only to my wonderful helper-friends (a particularly heartfelt shout-out to the sensational Paddy Omlor, Agustin Bayer, and Christopher Lorenz!) but to every attendee; your great attitudes and generous spirits make all the work worth it! I am looking forward to offering you, God willing, an even better event in 2027!
With prayers and thankfulness,
Nathaniel