June 9th, Capture the Flag

Today all of the period 3 P.E. classes combined to play capture the flag. We played the actual version of capture the flag, where each team hides one flag in their side, and the other team attempts to find the flag and carry it back to their own side. The game took place around the entire school, from the lower field all the way to the upper field.

My team hid the flag in the dumper at the back of the school in the beginning, so the other team's players weren't able to find our flag and capture it, whereas my team scored twice right after the game started.

For my part, I first tried to rush past the other team's defense line to the upper field, but got caught several times instead. Later in the game I went to the upper field from the front of the school, and tried to find the flag in the forest. In the end, I didn't even get a glimpse of the flag until the game ended, and got a few scratches on my shin from the branches in the forest.

May 12th, Speedball

I was exhausted today in Speedball, and the all the running under the sun made me feel really hot and sweaty.

What happened during the game today showed me how our class can break down when there is no supervision. Near the end of the class when we still had about 10 minutes for the game, people started leaving the game to take a break, and didn't go back in after they stopped. I also went in the shade for a minute to cool down, and that may have set a bad model for other classmate; when I joined back in the game, I tried to get everyone else back in too, but it didn't work.

I believe after this class, next time we would all know to set a good example and keep the game going. Being a leader is not just about doing the right thing myself, but also encouraging and helping others to do the right thing also.

April 23rd, P.E Games

Today we played several games with Mr. Vaughn's class in the Large Gym; the games were mostly fun and creative, and I had a really good time playing them.

When we were playing dodgeball with the pins - where we try to knock down other people's pins with dodgeballs and keep ourselves in the game - I noticed a few things that made the game less fun than it might have been. There were a lot of pins put in play in the basketball court - about 20 of them - and they weren't evenly spaced out, so along the sidelines the pins were only about 2 meters from each other. Because the pins were so close, no one want to leave their spot since their pin would get knock over for sure. Everyone ended up standing beside their pins and not really doing anything, and so the game wasn't rotating as fast as it's meant to. Also, it makes it hard for the people waiting to go on to see which pins are emptied. In the end, everyone only got to play in the game about twice.

A good way to improve this game when there are two classes playing it would be to have two smaller fields playing at once. This way it would be easier to space the pins out, and the smaller space gives more chance for the pins to get knocked over and the rotations going. It would also make the knocked over pins easier to be seen. To make things even easier, we can have the people who are out go to the front of the lineup first, so they can tell the people that are waiting to go on before they go to lineup again. If we do these things, I'm confident the game will get a lot more intense and fun for everyone.

April 17th, Ping Pong (And Helping Out Tony)

Today's choices for P.E were soccer, volleyball, and hockey, none of which was interesting to me; so I tried to get a game of basketball going in the Small Gym, but not a lot of people were interested. Then me, Caleb (Brown), and Will went to set up for Ping Pong; when we were getting the equipments Mr. Neuf asked us to help Tony put away the chairs in the cafeteria, and we said that we would help.

Putting the chairs away took a lot of work. I was amazed at how many chairs were left over from lunch; there were probably 150 of them scattered around the cafeteria - more reason for me to stack the chairs and put them away after luch from now on. After we were done, me, Caleb, Will, and Seth played Ping Pong until class was ending. I was surprised at how good Caleb was; I didn't even know he played Ping Pong.

It wasn't a very exciting day, but I felt good about helping Tony put that gigantic pile of chairs away. I guess that's what they mean by satisfaction from helping others. :)

April 9th, Speedball

Today our class got organized much faster and better than yesterday, because Mr. Neuf talked to us about being attentive and paying attention when the class is trying to get organized, and lead the game himself. I really agree with what Mr. Neuf said about not fooling around or hanging around outside the class circle; it's just impossible to get everyone's attention and agree on a set of rule and set up for the game when our classmates are all over the place.

I've never played speedball before, but the rules were pretty easy to understand. You play soccer until you catch the ball in midair before it hits the ground, and now you play football; when the ball drops to the ground or you get tagged, you go back to soccer. A "touchdown" is one point, scoring a goal two points, bouncing the ball up from the ground and kicking it over the football poles three points.

I figured out pretty quickly that the game needs a lot of teamwork. It's called speedball for a reason: the ball can get down from one end of the soccer field (which is about a whole minute of hard running, if not sprinting) to the other end in a minute. Having two balls in play at the same time made the game even faster. There's also no breaks; no outs, no foul (hopefully people won't start tackling each other for no reason), and after a team scores the ball goes right back to play. With all that in mind, if someone tried to run back and forth and cover every part of play, they'd be killing themselves.

Our team didn't figure out a good teamwork strategy at first and struggled to keep up with the other team's fast attacks. After a break we started to focus on passing more to each other and form a line of defense to keep the other team from breaking in; I helped our team play better by organizing the ball movement and passing to the people that are open. When we played as a team we finally started to score, and I didn't even need to run out of breath like before.

Speedball is fun, and it definitely helps to improve our sense of teamwork and communication. I hope we can play it again.

April 7th, Capture the Flag

Today in capture the flag the pride of us boys was seriously damaged, because we lost really badly to the girls. And to think that most of us were excited to go boys against girls... (sigh)

When the game started, the girls got on the defensive side right away, and pretty much made human walls on their side. That didn't stop a bunch of us from rushing over to go for the footballs right away. Well, THAT ended really badly, and half of our team landed in jail in less than a minute. I got myself caught too, when I tried to sneak to save a person and help out with the team. It didn't help things that the girls had Jazzy on their side; he pretty much shuted off all the help we might get from the team by himself. So we were stranded in jail for the better half of the game; I got so bored that I played chopsticks with Abishek. Naturally, we lost the game with only a few footballs left, even though our team did better after half of us were captured.

Mr. Neuf said it was a case of brain winning over muscles; I will sort of agree with that :(. The strategy wasn't that complicated - just stay put and take out as much of the other team as possible, then go back on the offense. We lost because we weren't careful enough (I'm inclined to think it's because we don't want the game to get too boring), and I'm sure next time our boys team would do better. On the other hand, it is just a game, and I felt pretty good about trying to get our players back (the getting stranded and doing nothing for 20 minutes wasn't really fun though).

Anyway, it was a fun class. :)

February 19th, Ultimate

Today I chose to do Ultimate again for choice. This time, because a baseball game was also going on on the upper field, we took the game to the farther end of the upper field and set it up along the width of the field, with the portables and the walls on the other end as the end zones.

I helped to line out the field with cones we took from the outside storage.

Today's game started off pretty much the same as last time, but since we had so much people playing Mr. Neufeld suggested we use another frisbee in the game. Things got much more interesting after that. We mostly ended up with one frisbee on one end and another frisbee on the other end, and both end had more attackers than defenders. For my part I mostly stay around our team's end zone and the mid-field part, defending and making long passes to the girls that were literally "fighting" at the other end =). Having another frisbee was definitely more fun and interesting, and I'm hoping we can add even more twists to the game next time.

February 17th, Ultimate

Today for choice I went with most of our class outside to play Ultimate. This time we played it more seriously than the time in September, because Caleb Brown is in the Ultimate team and had us playing by the rules. To sum it up, we can't take any step after receiving the frisbee - pivot is allowed - and one has to pass the frisbee inside 10 counts after catching it.

Our team's main attackers were the group of girls - Yulia, Gabby, etc. - Joel, and me. Joel really liked to do crazy long passes that most of the time ended up on the ground, but I prefer to make short and safer passes. The girls always scream when they are trying to pass or catch the frisbee, especially when either team's about score. It definitely made the game even more interesting =).

I think that like any team sports, communication and teamwork is really important in Ultimate. The best strategy is to have teammates spaced out a few metres apart down the field, and just make short passes to each other. It's also really important to get the attention of the people you are passing to, otherwise there's almost no chance anyone can catch the frisbee. Of course, the most important things is still to have fun.

December 2nd, Outside, The Fox and the Hounds

Today we did the fox and the hounds outside with Mr. Davids' class. The game is essentially tag, with everyone split into groups of two, and two groups would each take a whistle and be the "fox", hiding from the other groups, the "hounds". Each fox group have to blow on the whistle as loud as they can every minute, and when they are caught, the group that catches them become the new fox, and have 2 minutes to get away.

My group was one of the foxes twice. The first time we got the whistle, we tried to go into the woods, but all of us stepped into a stream while running from another group. I tried to swing over the stream by grabing onto a thick branch that was sticking up from the ground, but the branch snapped, and I ended up stepping into the stream with my right shoe.

September 25th, Ultimate/Football

Today we tried to self-organize an ultimate game on the upper field, and it was a good learning experience for me as we tried to organize everyone so we can have a good game.

There were 17 people in our group of ultimate game, so we decided to divide into 4 groups. To save time, we picked four captains and quickly selected our group members. Making the teams this way saves some time, but like Mr. Neufeld pointed out, it may make the people left out at the end feel bad. I believe we can try another way to make the teams next time.

When we were trying to decide how to run the games, we ran into a lot of confusion because almost everyone had an opinion on how to set up the game. We agreed that there will be two games going on separate fields at the same time, but everyone wanted to have the rules and size of the fields their own way. In the end, I got everyone's attention, made my suggestions, and asked if anyone has any objections. Getting everyone's attention and having only one person really helped to quickly organize the game, and now I know how best to efficiently organize a game next time.

As we played the game, we made changes to the rules, making a larger field and requiring the Frisbee to be passed past the end zone to score a point. By changing the rules to improve the game and counting in everyone, we all had a really fun time.

September 16th, Dodgeball

Today in dodgeball, I helped to make everyone else have fun by holding back on how hard I threw the ball at other people when I'm up close, so no one will get hurt from the game.