Team Life Outside of the Track Adventure!

Title: Team Life Outside the Track Adventure!

Thursday had been a tough practice physically.  Short, middle, and long distance all were pushed hard and then I opened the pole vault pit.  My daughter had worked on pole vault on Wednesday because she knew I was going to kill the team on Thursday.  Autumn's practice on Wednesday had gone very well, with two nice hits at ten feet with a bar in place and a great vault over 8’6”!  She looked ready for Saturday and I hope she is, she’s ranked in the top five for pole vault:)  Jillian came over to me that Thursday night, while I worked with a few modified girls.  “What do you think, Jill?" I asked her.  "Do you want to work tonight or Friday?”  Jill was very tired from practice so she decided Friday would be better!  I worked with the modified kids for awhile and then closed the pit.  As I was pulling the cover over it, I realized I hadn’t invited any of the kids from the team for nine square at the youth center that evening!

What is nine square?  It is a sport that costs $900 dollars to buy!  Our VBS raised money to buy one for Bible Club and they said, “We don’t need it during the winter, why don’t you guys use it!”  It is a lot of fun but it is nice to have at least nine kids or more when playing it.  Praise the Lord we had more that night!  David, our director, had invited several kids from the track team and kids from PA.  I was glad Dave had invited kids but I was nervous they wouldn’t come.  “Please, Lord,” I said wearily, “help some kids to show up tonight!” 

Within a few minutes of the center opening that night we had more than nine people which would be perfect for nine square!  Jumpers, pole vaulters, distance runners, hurdlers, middle distance athletes came in.  In track you might all be on the same team but you are constantly be subdivided running off here or there to practice this or that.  That night we would all be playing the same game, whether the kid was in seventh grade or a senior!  (A few kids that came were not from the track team but most were:) 

How do you play?  There are nine blue squares held up in the air on poles that can be set to three different heights.  One height we only use with elementary students it is so low.  The medium height allows for spiking and other tricks where the highest height is a more like volleyball with nine individual teams.  We played on medium and boy was it intense!  At the start of the game kids took different squares and those left over got in line.  The nine squares are like a tic-tac-toe board with its ends boxed.  The ninth square is the middle square and everyone is trying to get there!  The person in the ninth square starts each round tossing or serving the ball into another square.  That kid gets one hit to send the ball through the top of their square and into another square.  The kids have gotten good enough that sometimes the kid who receives the ball off the serve will hit it to the square on the other side of the grid, trying to set up a spike on the ninth square!  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but it is cool to watch.  The kid in the ninth square is constantly turning as the ball bounces to squares all around them.  When a kid fails to hit the ball back up through the top to another square, they are out.  They had out to the line and a new kid rotates into one.  The higher the square in value the more people move.  For example if the kid in first square gets out, all that happens is that a new player enters the grid.  If number eight gets out, a lot of players snake around the perimeter, making their journey to the ninth square!

Bigger boys wait for that vicious spike on a rival but don’t rule out the younger teens.  As the ball gets batted around the grid, a younger student can hit it hard into the air and arcing down viciously at someone else’s square.  The game is fast and furious, with some volleys actually lasting twenty seconds and some getting over fast!

It is fun to play a game that has no practiced skill or has the need to push one’s body to its absolutely limits, like we often do in track and field!  When a bigger boy gets out sometimes there will be a happy cheer as a mighty champion has been temporarily eliminated and sometimes there will be a cry at the injustice when a younger student getting hammered by a play.  Mostly there are laughs because defeat doesn't last long!  There is no score totaled up at the end and no officials blow their whistles.  I love track and field but it is nice to have a break from it for awhile!

After we are done with nine square have a Bible lesson.  That night I spoke on the first part of I Corinthians 16:13.  I open with a story about my sister Joy.  One day when Joy was about four years old, Mom said, “Joy, I’m going to grab a diaper, could you watch your little brother John for a moment?”  Mom left.  Within seconds there was a loud thump as John rolled off the bed and then the ear rending sounds of a baby in pain.  Mom dashed back in, scooping John up.  “Joy!  I told you to watch John!” she cried, soothing him.  “But I did watch him, Momma!" Joy complained.  "He rolled off the bed and bonked his head!”  Joy had taken mother literally  and “WATCHED” John as she was told!  The Bible verse tells us to watch.  What are we to watch?  The New Testament gives us several things.  We are to watch for Jesus return, watch out for sin (things the God says are wrong in the pages of scripture), and we are to watch out for fellow believers (in a positive, family way).  Then it commands us to “Stand!”  We are to take a stand against sin and the world in Ephesians 6:12-13.  As Easter approaches I remind them the Lord Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and because of that he is the way to God.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father but by me!”

Then we play four on the couch.  It’s girls against boys and after some debate Cash defects to the boys team.  We pick names out of the box and then attempt to pack the couch with girls or boys!”  Everyone’s name is in the box and so you will generally end up with someone else’s name or occasionally, you will draw your own.  At the start of the game no one has any idea who anyone is, and the person to the right of the empty chair must call out a name.  Whoever has that name moves to the open chair.  The game is like memory meets checkers... sort of!  After a hard fought game the boys won but there will always be next time!  It was great to get together and just play some for fun games!  During XC season, one family invites the team over to their indoor pool and we swim and play ping pong.   Ping pong is fun to challenge each other on, because it doesn’t involve running!  Getting away as a group to play fun games that aren’t a trick to building track skills is a great way to build a team!  In track next week we will play zombies at least once and occasionally might play freeze tag, sharks and minnows, or duck duck goose!  One favorite game is mat ball but that only happens once every few years!  I remember one spring break day, it was an easy day so we played soccer.  We all played our minds out and were all dead tired for the “hard” day the next afternoon!  The other coach came in special to work with a relay, only to find them dead tired!  Oh, well, it was epic game anyway!  The only things we have done in track for fun this year is Bruts jumps in pole vault practice and we had a standing vault competition which was fun, even if I lost!  (My two best vaulters weren't playing so it was very fair and fun!)  I hope to survive the zombie apocalypse next week and I will... if I run fast enough!  "Wait!" you cry.  Didn't you say, "Games aren't a trick to doing track training or drills?"  Most of the games aren't but some are!)  I don't mind mixing fun with training as long as it is done sparingly!  (Although at the meet on Saturday I want to play apples to apples at least once!)

The writing lesson is simple.  Just like a track team trying to do well, it is great to have a focused book on a quest or objective but it doesn't hurt for you characters to experience other things besides the quest!  Otherwise all your book will be is the quest and the growing problems to triumphing over it.  Sometimes a funny side story is just what the audience needs before going back into the pressure cooker of plot tension!

  *** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***