Community Service Part Two- The School Olympics Fun Day.
Yes, fun day. Fun
damn it.
A school fundraiser, in the park, on a beautiful crisp
winter’s afternoon.
Because it was ‘run’ by year 3, year 3 parents were expected
to do the lion’s share of the volunteering.
And we did.
We refereed soccer, adjudicated netball, judged
gymnastics. Made cakes, kept score, put
things up, took things down.
Families were sorted into countries with two to three
families in each. Each country travelled
as a pack around 10 ‘events’. The events
included the three legged 100m sprint, tug-o-war and shot put.
The idea was to have fun.
And raise a bit of money for the school. Which we did.
There was a costume element with a prize for the best
dressed team. Some teams went all
out. The Christensens were part of
Ireland. My husband excelled by wearing
a green leprechaun hat with attached beard for most of the afternoon. I wore a top hat, which informed everyone I
was Irish on St Patrick’s day.
My job as volunteer was to assemble 2 beach volleyball
courts/nets and referee one of them. The
Dad who was rostered to ref the other court and I assembled the nets, in such a
way that has never been done before and will never be repeated. I doubt even we could repeat it. Let’s just say one of them was perfect for
kids (or perhaps the seven dwarfs). The
other was the right height but you couldn’t touch it or it fell over. Together we were a great team.
Exactly one minute after we finished assembling the final
net, the first team appeared over the horizon.
The rules for our beach volleyball were simple but didn’t
have much to do with volleyball. Each
team divided themselves up on either side of the net. They had to pass the ball across the net as
many times as possible in five minutes without dropping it. If they dropped, I started the count
again. I took their best score.
Kids under 10 were allowed to throw and catch. Adults were supposed to use proper volleyball
moves. Believe me when I tell you a bit
of volleyball in high school and watching the girls win gold in the Olympics does
not make one an expert volleyballer. After
a few disasters, I let everyone throw and catch.
Due to the varied ages, sizes and respect for rules of each
team, the scores varied wildly. As a
ref, I got better as I went along and was generous to teams full of small
people. Especially if their parents were
including them and not just passing the ball back and forth over their heads
(yes this happened).
The beach was so small that if the ball was dropped (really,
really often) it would often roll into the water and begin to drift alarmingly
out to sea. I decided ball retrieval was
beyond my scope of duties but did begin to introduce ‘ocean time’, a concept
similar to football injury time. This
gave people plenty of time to get their shoes off and wade in for the ball
without losing any of their precious five minutes.
The five minutes were more precious to some teams than
others.
A few things I noticed.
1.
Some people, no matter where you put them, are
ultra competitive. They just can’t help
it. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing
beach volleyball with a bunch of people barely over 110cm, they’re still
playing hard to win. And they’re not
above attempting to influence (hassle) the ref to give them a higher
score. Really? Because it’s so important?
2.
Some kids just aren’t sporty. And there’s nothing you can do about it. They may be the children of sporty parents,
some of whom totally get their kid and are dealing with the fact that they may
not have parented a future world champion in -insert sport here-. Others can’t get their head around it and the
result is stressful for everyone.
3.
Kids are born to have fun. They may not want to play the game you want
them to play, but they’re going to play anyway.
Some played volleyball, some wrestled their brother on the ground, some
started building sandcastles, out in the sun, with their parents and friends
near the beach, it didn’t matter. They
were having a ball.
And that made us all very happy. But seven shades of knackered by the end of
the day. Fun is very tiring.
