HDC Olympics

It has been a busy past couple of days, marked by the arrival of the fall training YES (and STEP) teams. There are a lot of things that could be mentioned, but I'll focus on one event that started as a passing idea a couple weeks ago.

We as staff were talking about who knows what when the idea of doing an Olympics with HDC related events came up. We did some brainstorming and came up with the following events:

Short Track Van Racing-Before you picture people driving vans in circles, this event is based off of short track speed skating. In this event, contestants raced around our big van, Oscar, five times, advancing through heats and semi finals.

Van Slalom-A timed run through the row of vans in the parking lot out back.

Team Leader Van Parking-Team leaders (being the only ones with driving priviledges) get twenty seconds to back a van into a parking space (a skill that they will have to use many times over the next couple months) and scored by how many inches off of the "perfect park" they are.

Round Robin Ping Pong-The classic ping pong for many people game.

Synchronized Laundry Folding-Different articles of clothing/laundry are given degrees of difficulty, and the performance is judged by synchronization, flair and creativity, and quality of folding. We had some doubts about how this would work, given that the teams only found out about the olympics a day ahead of time, but were very impressed by the effort put into it.

Country Find-Contestants try to be the first to locate a country (or landmark in the later rounds) on a large world map after it is called out.

Sword Drills-Contestants try to be the first to find a passage of scripture after the reference is given.

At the end, medals (circluar pieces of wood cut out with a circle drill and painted gold, silver, or bronze) were given to the top three performers in each event as well as to the teams that cululatively scored the most points (3 for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze)

In the end, I'm not sure who had more fun, the participants who competed, or us staff who got to see about two or three weeks of planning play out. For both groups, I'm sure, it was a fun evening with memories created. Following are a few pictures from the festivites. I don't personally have pictures of many events due to making sure everything was working, running some of the events, and judging some.

Above, the HDC Olympic logo projected for the opening ceremonies (in which we spoofed off of the Beijing Olympics with a drum routine, had a parade of nations, and lit the olympic flame below)
contestants round the first corner hard in a short track van racing heat
round robin ping pong
The crowd enjoys watching synchronized laundry folding
Oh, yeah, for those of you interested in how your Mountville Mennonite Church representatives did,

Jamila took the Bronze medal in the Country Find,

and Sarah took the Bronze medal in synchronized laundry folding, along with team mate Melanie.