Journal 1

Teaching an Angle Ball clinic at Camp Susquehannock

Since the end of my junior year I have been working on my Senior Exhibit. It started out as something that was really far away and I didn’t need to think about it, then I realized I needed to write journals and I had about five due and zero written. Although I didn’t have any journals written, I had started to work on figuring out what I wanted to do for my Senior Exhibit. I had also met with my advisor, Mrs. Garbutt, and bounced some ideas off her and tried to narrow all my options down. We got it down to 3; SCUBA diving, flying, and bringing games to FA. At first, I chose to learn how to fly. The idea was great, I had a friend with a pilot for a step dad and they owned a plane, what could be better? Well I’ll tell you, communication and stability. That plan to learn to fly was unfortunately a no-go because Mike, the pilot, and I were not able to communicate well enough to get a schedule together for me to learn, besides, the plane was up for sale and we didn’t know how long we would have it for. So I moved on and chose to bring games to FA. I am already a certified SCUBA Diver and although it is amazing I felt like bringing games that instituted a sense of confidence in athletics would not only be more fun, but it would also be worth while.

Now that I knew what I wanted to do, I had to decide what I was going to do for my summer learning. I already had a great idea; why not go to the place where I learned these games to learn how to teach them? And that is exactly what I did. For my summer learning I went to Camp Susquehannock, the most amazing place to spend your summer, and taught clinics and refereed 4 different kinds of games. The games that I was most focused on when I went there were Gaga, Angle Ball and Buff Ball. Once I got there however, I learned a new game, MC Fireball. After seeing how much fun the campers had playing, and how easy it was to play and set up, I decided to add MC Fireball to the list of games I would bring back to Fredericksburg Academy. I spent six weeks learning how to teach clinics, teaching the clinics on the games I was bringing back, and refereeing these games. While I was doing all of this I documented everything. I had the camp photographers, Tim and RK, take pictures of both the boys and the girls playing all of the games, I also had Tim record a game of Angle Ball that I plan to use in my finial presentation. I was also able to get all the rules and type them up.

Once I got home I put everything I learned to use and I contacted the SLC. I asked them if it was possible to use one of my games at the retreat. Before school even started I went in to school and attended an SLC meeting about the Retreat. I explained briefly some of the games I was using in my senior exhibit and together we decided that Angle Ball would be the best one to use for this event. I am happy to report that my first application, the retreat, went very smoothly. The only problem we had was getting half cones but I was able to get some before we left for the retreat. Since school has started I have been working with Mr. Carol and Ms. Mc Mahon on getting these games introduced into the P.E. program. So far I feel like my senior exhibit has been a great success and I’m looking forward to continuing it throughout the year.