Hey world
I think its only fair that I tell you now that I
plan on committing to writing about whats been going on the last few days here
so get a comfortable seating position before reading cause its going to be a
long one. This could be broken into separate posts per day, but wheres the fun
in that??
In the camp world, all the work the kids do
during the summer and the intercampus really falls by the side and means
nothing when we get into week 6 thanks to all the attention turning to when
Olympic breakout will happen sparking the start of the biggest three days on
J-side. Olympics divides all of junior side into six teams with kids from ages
7 through to 11.
Each team is assigned counselors, three of which
are lieutenants that coach each of the three divisions in their sport and one
captain who runs the team. After missing out on being anything in my first year
I wasn’t disappointed two years in a row and managed to be a lieutenant last
year. This year it was my turn to don the white shirt and be a captain. Given
the consecutive years of australians being captains, and doing it well, I was
determined to live up to efforts of last years and 2010s.
One of the hardest things to do starts before
any sport even takes place. Step one is choosing a song for song and cheer.
after you get past step one then you have to rewrite the entire song having it
relate is some way to your country, greylock, the team, your colour, the
greylock olympic committee, teamwork, sport, the list goes on and on. Given we
find out our country and colour the night before breakout its not a lot of time
to write a song. And even less time when you take into account that the kids
then need time to learn brand new lyrics to a song they already know and then
perform said song at the end of day three. The song I chose to rewrite was
‘glad you came’ by the wanted. The kids love the song and thanks to the beat it
makes timing really easy, what could go wrong right? But ill get to all that
later...
Hopefully you are still with me after all that
cause looking back over it im starting to wonder how I got anything done. the
six countries in this years games were Italy, Belgium (making a return after an
unlikely win in 2010 song and cheer), France, Spain, Netherlands and the legendary
almighty fantastic country known as Sweden. Now I know you must be wondering
what one I was given. I wont keep you waiting or force you to read down too far
to find out cause that wouldn’t be nice at all. Yes people as shocking as it
may be, I was captain of Sweden with the colour yellow being our colour.
During olympics even the most mundane things
have ‘olympic’ put before them just cause we can. The reason I tell you this is
cause after Olympic breakout we have Olympic shop! The captains and lieutenants
all go on a trip to wallmart – cause we are classy like that – and by a whole
lot of random stuff and clothing in our team colour. Each of the three days is
met with a different outfit so we need to shop for some sort of crazy look that
would never be acceptable in the real world. the one constant that remained no
matter what I wore was the flag of Sweden, as a cape, and my captains shirt.
Day one – suspenders day
Combining the colours of our flag, our outfit
for day one was suspenders. Yellow shirts with blue suspenders. So overall we
have 6 teams, 24 counsellors, dressed in their own crazy outfits and we are
expected to have control of our teams and tell them what to do while they take
us seriously. The crazy part is not our outfits but rather that they actually
listen.
To start each day we have Olympic wake up. The
group heads get the next couple of days off from having to wake everyone up as
the captains happily take on the responsibility. This is no ordinary wake up of
good morning good morning good morning it’s a beautiful day in the birkshires…
no no no… its whistles and blow horns running in and out of the bunks. There
was a resident calling from the other side of the lake to complain about the
air horns. Sadly we were not there during the call or there is a good chance
the temptation to blow the horn over the phone may have been too great.
Traditionally the opening event of olympics is
athletics. A whole lot of running and jumping and throwing things that takes up
the whole morning session. After event number one I no longer cared what
happened for the rest of the day. This is due to the fact that we won the first
gold medal of the 2012 games! No matter what argument may arise over who got
the most medals at the end we know for a fact we had the most gold at one
point! Things went very smoothly and we actually finished early. Would have
been awesome of the song had been written by this stage so we could get them
practicing but hey it’s the morning of day one, I only had the chorus which was
still subject to change so not likely.
the afternoon was met with hill soccer,
brave baseball and chief football… for people who don’t know the
divisions, hill is 7-9 year old, brave is 10 year old and chief is 11 year old…
Sweden managed to get medals in all events which was fantastic cause all the
kids were coming away with something no matter what else happened in the three
days.
coming up with chants was easy since the kids
made them all up and I didn’t need to think up any! Personally I think samoas –
team I was in last year – chants were much better but at least the kids had fun
with these.
The evening session had more medals for hill
soccer and brave baseball. Chiefs unfortunately missed out in the basketball
after losing both their early games by 2pts each. It was at this point I was
unsure how to feel when it was clear that I had a good team on my hands that
were regularly going to make medal rounds, but ill get to where that is a bad
thing later on…
The biggest thing for me that happened on day
one… that night I finished the song
Day two – construction day
We took more of a comfortable approach with day
two by combining a pair of shorts with bright yellow reflective vests. So day
two started, we had Olympic wake ups, and again complaints from the people
across the lake since apparently air horns are not their preferred method of
waking up in the morning.
It really was a case of another morning session
and another collection of medal rounds for Sweden. Now not all the medal rounds
were for gold but a decent number of them were. Im almost at the part were
being successful really sucks sometimes!
Day two afternoon means its time for the swim
meet. At no point up until this point had I looked at my team overall from the
swimming perspective. Three out of four captains were waterfront counsellors
with two of them being swim teachers. We had a little bit of an advantage in
knowing the strengths of our kids when it comes to swimming. The first thing I
knew about my team was I didn’t have any of the best swimmers in any division.
I did have the third or fourth in some cases and overall they were very even
with no glaringly obvious weakness, if you don’t count one or two that should
be easy to hide in relays, but never the best. The great moment was when I
discovered that all but one event in the Olympic swim meet is a relay event so
the even numbers I have could work to my advantage.
As it turns out we dominated the swim meet. Came
away with 11 gold and only didn’t medal in two events. One of the two events
goes down as my favourite moment from the olympics. While I know this is a long
post already, im sorry but the story will be told, but ill shorten it. There
was a kid that really wanted to swim but he wasn’t the greatest swimmer. Naturally
im not going to deny him being able to swim regardless of how good he is so I
had him with three other swimmers who were good. they decided the order on the
dock and he was chosen to be third. When the second swimmer got in we were
second or third but really not that far off given it was a pretty even race.
When the final swimmer got in, every one else had already finished but he got
in anyways and finished the race. Instead of blaming the kid who swam third for
losing them a medal they all congratulated him on a great effort and made him
feel good about getting out there. For all I know they may have later beaten
him when counselors weren’t around but I like to think that’s not the case.
The evening session was free for us thanks to
our chiefs losing the close games so we got to start teaching the kids the
song. Here is the part where i explain why being successful can sometimes suck.
This was the only time – apart from the hour that is set aside before song and
cheer – that we were able to teach our kids the song properly due to them being
in medal rounds every other time. We tried during their down time if they had a
bye, but they get easily distracted by the other games. It was also during this
time I found out that one of the chiefs had never won an Olympic gold in all
his time at camp and it was going to be his last olympics cause next year he is
on senior side. Would of be great if he told me in the morning so I could put
him in a stacked swim event to try get him there. But there is always day three
to try get it for him.
Day three – paint day
Well what can I say about day three… It’s the
earliest wake up for us – 5:45am for me – and one of the more uncomfortable
days because a pair of boxers/shorts is all we wear with the rest of our bodies
painted. As it turns out I opted to paint the arms, legs and face but not body.
When Olympic shop did not supply me with the yellow body paint I wanted, I
quickly remembered the difficulty people had last year in getting paint out of
chest hair. That had me worried. I then was convinced to wear the shirt to
avoid any difficulties when everyone decided to use the actual paint instead of
body paint cause the colour was brighter… what the hell… but anyways paint was
happening and everyone was coated in it. Oh and it was about 30 degrees Celsius
I think and humid, so just imagine how great we were feeling.
Straight after all the kids were off to their
activities with the lieutenants coaching, I went off and showered since the
paint was already starting to irritate me. Thankfully it came off fine and I
was very comfortable afterwards in my captains shirt and sponge bob squarepants
boxers. It didn’t take long for the other captains to do the same and by lunch
everyone was paint free since it was just too hot.
As for the events the morning was filled with
hill baseball, brave basketball and chief soccer. All three teams made the gold
medal games with the end result being one gold and two silver. Unfortunately
the kid who had never won gold was not in the group that got gold.
The afternoon was the first time I truly coached
the entire time during olympics. Sure while I was at basketball I couldn’t
contain myself and started telling them what to do or at least tell the coach
what to get them doing, but I never fully took over or stayed at basketball
longer than 5 or 10 minutes to ensure I didn’t start coaching. Now basketball
is the logical thing that I think its fair to say people could see me coaching,
but no… the one sport that I took over coaching for was hockey. Now last year I
had to coach it in the olympics and knew nothing. This year I come in having
watched a lot of hockey and followed it fairly closely although the one I have
been watching has been on ice while this is not, I still think it works to my
advantage. In game one I shuffled the team around and found the ‘A team’ which
id call for if we ever got in trouble during a game. The A team got us from 1-3
down to win 4-3 in the final 5 minutes of game one so they passed the test!
As it turns out the kid who was without gold was
part of this team so fingers were crossed. the team managed to win there way
through to the gold medal game even though it was not expected. I may have
unintentionally built up the kid with no gold thing which I really didn’t mean
to do but day three gave him two chances… day three also gave him two silver.
Our best hockey player was out with an injury half way through the gold medal
game, leaving majority of the work up to a ten year old playing up in an eleven
year olds competition. The rest of the afternoon saw us come away with another
medal for hill camp.
So the sporting events were all done and the
only thing left is song and cheer. against all odds the kids actually knew our
song. There was one line they were having trouble with but I wasn’t too worried
since they had got it right enough time to make me think they will get it when
it matters. The handy thing about the song ‘glad you came’ is that the beat is
easy to learn the cues to. The plan was coming together that the ease of the
song would make it easy for the kids to get right. So the numbers were in the
hat and we were going first, which was great so the kids didn’t have to sit
there and wait slowing forgetting the words as they listen to everyone else. As
it turned out going first was a terrible thing to happen. the cord they had in
the speaker was the wrong size for ipods so while they went to find another one
we had to use a laptop which is much much quieter. The kids got through the
start and the lines they kept messing up with ease. But they also lost their
place because they were so loud making them mess up two other lines. And mumble
there was through while they found their spot again… or so they tell me, but
given it was the part they had right every rehersal I believe them. That was
the only time there was any mistakes for the song although that wasn’t enough
to stop them quietly explaining why they went wrong and apologising for getting
it wrong. At the end of the night we didn’t win song and cheer but they did an awesome
job and given all the medals they had I doubt any of them will be unhappy with
there overall efforts.
Personally I loved it and had a great time being
captain. Sad that it had to come to an end but also happy that I am regaining
my voice and no longer relying on energy drinks to get me through the day.
Monster was the official energy drink of the games instead of slap like last
year. Either way I don’t think anyone involved would have stayed awake the
whole third day without it.
So after writing more for this than I did some
of my English essays I think I should wrap it up now. I don’t really have any
sport report send off sadly but hope you enjoyed our olympics and if you
managed to make it this far im really really sorry that I wrote so much for you
to sit through
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