Special Olympics

By Uncle Hans

It's been two or three weeks since we have had a game and the coaches decided that we need something competitive to keep our competitive spirit alive.  They decided to have a Special Olympics at practice on Friday.

     They also decided that freshmen would be the captains, which landed me the job of Captain. They had an NFL style draft, and this is my team. We called ourselves The Ineligibles, since three of us are just that.

If you're wondering why a college football. team would waste  practice time with seemingly silly games, it turns out that it's not that uncommon. The coach of the team we played last week routinely sets aside part of each Friday afternoon practice for Grade School playground kickball. It lets the guys compete, have fun, and still provides football-useful skill training, throwing, catching, running, kicking, agility, Etc..

Here we are strategizing for the next event which was a straightforward Punt Pass and Kick contest.

 

I punted a weak, but acceptable 30 yards. The rest of the guys pull their weight and we took a second in this event.

The next event was a hodgepodge relay. Here we are discussing who are the best in the group to do which activities.

The third guy sprinted 40 yards and the fourth guy, which was me, sprinted 20. Here I am about to tag off to the fifth guy.....

  

If you're wondering why they picked the slowest guy on the team to sprint, it is a strategy. The difference between my time in the 20 yard dash and someone fast is only one or two seconds. Not really significant in an event which takes a minute or more….

 

Guys five and six had to throw a tennis ball and a football into a target bucket about 10 yards away. We won this event in 49 seconds.

The last event was the classic tug of war and we took second.

Unfortunately, that left the score tied at the end of four events so a sudden death tie breaker was instituted.

The tiebreaker event was called The Dizzy punt. One try, one team member, spin in a circle 10 times and then punt the football. Our guy looks like he's punting after a 12 pack. The other guy didn't look much better, but his kick went about five yards farther, so they won.

( my thanks again go to the team managers, who did the photography)

Uncle Hans

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