Sports Clinic Day (Austin)

Today was Sports Clinic Day! I was very excited for today as this was my big to-do. During preparation of our trip Jami had assigned me the task of Coordinating the Sports Clinic. That meant coming up with the games, organizing the teams, and developing a “Sports Safety Presentation” that would be presented after the games were over.

The event itself was held at a community sports arena down the street from Butundo Basic (the local school). When Jami, Matt, Jill, Sidney and I arrived at the sports arena we were greeted by Pius, Henry, Duncan and Davison, who would be translating for us. There were already some kids playing soccer when we got there but the child population quickly jumped up to around 100+ kids when news had spread that we had arrived. Once most of the kids had shown up we played “Red Light, Green Light” to get the kids warmed-up and excited about the games. Afterwards Matt and Jill lead stretching circles for the boys and girls while the translators and I went around and placed the children into teams by tying colored strings on their wrists. Once finished we broke the kids up into their colored teams and started the games. The whole event worked like a well oiled machine. Jami, Matt, Jill, and Sidney were team leads and helped get the kids get ready for each event, the translators did a fantastic job of explaining the rules of each game to the kids, and I did my best to keep the whole event moving smoothly with minimal hang-ups. The actual game events were as follows: Wheel Barrel Race, Dizzy Race, Three-Legged Race, Relay Race, Tug-o-War. The teams were very evenly matched and there was strong competition throughout the whole event.

After all the games were said and done we handed out these frozen water pops (which was total chaos) and then settled the kids back down so we could talk to them about sports safety. This was my first time actually using a translator to teach so I was a little nervous but I had been watching Matt all week in class so I understood how it would work and it went quite well. I talked to the kids about sports safety focusing on what to do if one of their friends was injured or if there is blood present. Matt helped out by playing the part of my injured friend and Jill helped by playing the parts of both an Adult and a Doctor. After the presentation we said our goodbyes to the children and headed back to Dr. Thinus’s house very satisfied with the outcome of the day’s events.