My church has a softball team and after a little bit of recruiting on their part, I said that I'd join. A few weeks ago we had our first practice, and I was a little nervous because I hadn't played softball since 8th grade so I was wondering if I still had it. It was 35 degrees, raining and really windy. I went up to bat and soon enough I'm hitting half of them to the fence! I wasn't sure how I'd do but I did better than I could've imagined!
I had a blast at softball practice, and we have our first 2 games today! Looking forward to the game.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
30 Hour Famine Day 1
This past weekend Lifeguards did their 30 hour famine. It was a whole lot of fun. The first thing we did was play this game called "bigger or better" where we were divided into teams, given a quarter, and went around the neighborhood asking people if they could give us something bigger or better than what we had.
My team cheated and we took our youth pastor's kid, Issac. We lost because we didn't exchange enough things. But the other teams got some really nice stuff! They got a DVD player, a red wings blanket, this big stuffed dog and then this one team totally screwed up and got an Ohio state buckeyes football jersey! I'd rather have a quarter than that stinkin jersey! One of the freshman, Sylus, put on the Ohio state jersey....I'm pleased to say that I had him pinned on the ground and was beating him silly with a pillow within the first 5 seconds.
After playing "bigger or better" we went to the wally ball court to play some wally ball. Wally ball is just like volleyball except there are walls on the sides and on the back so you can bounce the ball off of the walls. Our youth pastor Brad was picking the teams, he asked for who was good at volleyball and I raised my hand and next thing I know, I'm a captain. Unfortunately we still weren't able to pick our teams but it was nice knowing that I'd be in charge of my team.
So I'm standing off to the side waiting for Brad to give me the rest of my team. Brad grabs Kelsey, this girl who is one of the only people from lifeguards who drives me crazy. Immediately I start praying silently in my head that she isn't on my team. Then Brad sent Kelsey to a different team. I started thanking God for not giving me her, Brad puts Liz and Kate on my team. Both of whom have no idea what they're doing.
So I'm slightly bummed since most teams have 4 players and I was the only one who knew how to play on my team. As I looked at the other teams I could see that all of them [except one] had at least 2 good players on their team, so I soon relax knowing that Brad won't give me the short stick here. He has the last 2 guys left, one guy is my buddy Tommy who's a senior and we're pretty close. The other was Ian, a freshman who I really didn't know if he could play. Brad ended up giving me Ian. The first thing I asked Ian was if he was good at volleyball, his response? "Ehhh not really." Crap!
As I looked at the teams I could see that we were probably about the 2nd worst team out of about 7. The only team that had the least amount of talent was one with basically 3 useless players and Emily M. Emily didn't really want to be a ball hog, but I could tell she wished she had a better team. They couldn't even return the ball frequently. We beat them easily.
After the first game I was thinking "Hey that wasn't so bad. Maybe I underestimated our team. I haven't even broke a sweat!" That's when we went against the 2nd best team, with Brad (that booger stacked the teams!) Tommy, Nathan, and my sister Sienna. Their worst player was Sienna, and she would have been our second best player if she was on our team! We were slaughtered 9-15. That was the game when I discovered that Liz didn't want to hit the ball at all, Kate was scared of the ball, and Ian is an average player who was my only hope if I couldn't get to the ball in time.
I was soaked with sweat after that game and I knew that I was going to have to cover 3/4 of our side of the net in order to win. Now I hate ball hogging, because I don't like having people felt left out. But soon the girls made it clear that they were expecting me to get the ball if it came to their side. and the opposing teams soon found out our team's strategy was basically let Connor get the ball and if he can't get to it attempt to hit the ball straight into the air.
We then won our next 3 games to go 4-1 and we really started clicking as a team. By "as a team" I mean that Ian and I were starting to mesh into a pretty powerful tandem! He knew when I couldn't return the ball and would set it up nicely to me. It happened just in time too, because we were against the top team at 5-0 with 3 great players in Dan (a youth leader), Chad a 6-3 senior, and Sylus an athletic freshman.
They had a phenomenal strategy that worked really well against our game plan of me as the primary striker and Ian as my backup. They would hit the ball off the wall at a weird angle near the net so it was extremely hard to hit it over in just one hit. It paid in dividends for them as they got a 7-0 lead, very early. But after a while Ian and I got in stride with one another and he was able to give the ball to me in good position so I could strike the ball down with a large amount of velocity that made it had to return. Next thing I know, we're up 12-8!
That's when the hunger pains hit me like a brick wall! After not eating for 15 hours and running around for an hour straight, my body wasn't too happy with me. The pain affected my game and we were down 14-12. I decided to go all out for the rest of the game and was diving all over the place and just went completely crazy on them scoring 3 points to a 15-14 victory!... or so I thought. They played where you have to win by 2 points and we couldn't return their serves to lose 17-15.
Despite my disappointment to not knock off the top team, we still finished 3rd out of 7 and came closest to beating the top team than anyone with basically 2 useless players! Another thing is that we didn't have enough talent to really have a real strategy besides for let Connor carry this team on his back, and I fully believe if we had another player like Sienna, we would've came in first.
My team cheated and we took our youth pastor's kid, Issac. We lost because we didn't exchange enough things. But the other teams got some really nice stuff! They got a DVD player, a red wings blanket, this big stuffed dog and then this one team totally screwed up and got an Ohio state buckeyes football jersey! I'd rather have a quarter than that stinkin jersey! One of the freshman, Sylus, put on the Ohio state jersey....I'm pleased to say that I had him pinned on the ground and was beating him silly with a pillow within the first 5 seconds.
After playing "bigger or better" we went to the wally ball court to play some wally ball. Wally ball is just like volleyball except there are walls on the sides and on the back so you can bounce the ball off of the walls. Our youth pastor Brad was picking the teams, he asked for who was good at volleyball and I raised my hand and next thing I know, I'm a captain. Unfortunately we still weren't able to pick our teams but it was nice knowing that I'd be in charge of my team.
So I'm standing off to the side waiting for Brad to give me the rest of my team. Brad grabs Kelsey, this girl who is one of the only people from lifeguards who drives me crazy. Immediately I start praying silently in my head that she isn't on my team. Then Brad sent Kelsey to a different team. I started thanking God for not giving me her, Brad puts Liz and Kate on my team. Both of whom have no idea what they're doing.
So I'm slightly bummed since most teams have 4 players and I was the only one who knew how to play on my team. As I looked at the other teams I could see that all of them [except one] had at least 2 good players on their team, so I soon relax knowing that Brad won't give me the short stick here. He has the last 2 guys left, one guy is my buddy Tommy who's a senior and we're pretty close. The other was Ian, a freshman who I really didn't know if he could play. Brad ended up giving me Ian. The first thing I asked Ian was if he was good at volleyball, his response? "Ehhh not really." Crap!
As I looked at the teams I could see that we were probably about the 2nd worst team out of about 7. The only team that had the least amount of talent was one with basically 3 useless players and Emily M. Emily didn't really want to be a ball hog, but I could tell she wished she had a better team. They couldn't even return the ball frequently. We beat them easily.
After the first game I was thinking "Hey that wasn't so bad. Maybe I underestimated our team. I haven't even broke a sweat!" That's when we went against the 2nd best team, with Brad (that booger stacked the teams!) Tommy, Nathan, and my sister Sienna. Their worst player was Sienna, and she would have been our second best player if she was on our team! We were slaughtered 9-15. That was the game when I discovered that Liz didn't want to hit the ball at all, Kate was scared of the ball, and Ian is an average player who was my only hope if I couldn't get to the ball in time.
I was soaked with sweat after that game and I knew that I was going to have to cover 3/4 of our side of the net in order to win. Now I hate ball hogging, because I don't like having people felt left out. But soon the girls made it clear that they were expecting me to get the ball if it came to their side. and the opposing teams soon found out our team's strategy was basically let Connor get the ball and if he can't get to it attempt to hit the ball straight into the air.
We then won our next 3 games to go 4-1 and we really started clicking as a team. By "as a team" I mean that Ian and I were starting to mesh into a pretty powerful tandem! He knew when I couldn't return the ball and would set it up nicely to me. It happened just in time too, because we were against the top team at 5-0 with 3 great players in Dan (a youth leader), Chad a 6-3 senior, and Sylus an athletic freshman.
They had a phenomenal strategy that worked really well against our game plan of me as the primary striker and Ian as my backup. They would hit the ball off the wall at a weird angle near the net so it was extremely hard to hit it over in just one hit. It paid in dividends for them as they got a 7-0 lead, very early. But after a while Ian and I got in stride with one another and he was able to give the ball to me in good position so I could strike the ball down with a large amount of velocity that made it had to return. Next thing I know, we're up 12-8!
That's when the hunger pains hit me like a brick wall! After not eating for 15 hours and running around for an hour straight, my body wasn't too happy with me. The pain affected my game and we were down 14-12. I decided to go all out for the rest of the game and was diving all over the place and just went completely crazy on them scoring 3 points to a 15-14 victory!... or so I thought. They played where you have to win by 2 points and we couldn't return their serves to lose 17-15.
Despite my disappointment to not knock off the top team, we still finished 3rd out of 7 and came closest to beating the top team than anyone with basically 2 useless players! Another thing is that we didn't have enough talent to really have a real strategy besides for let Connor carry this team on his back, and I fully believe if we had another player like Sienna, we would've came in first.
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