The Van Aken Family: Cub Scout Field Trip #5--Gymnastics Room

This may have been our most brilliant idea yet! May's Cub Scout theme is Health and Fitness. For our first activity of the month, we took the boys up to the high school track to complete some physical fitness challenges such as the softball toss, the long jump, sit-ups, push-ups, and 50 yard dash. Potentially fun, but in reality, extremely exhausting. (For the leaders, not the boys!)

To start things off, the boys' lacrosse team was practicing on the field, so we tried to stay on the far back side out of their way. There's a big net that stretches across the back of the field, protecting innocent passers-by from stray balls. Stray balls happen to collect near the bottom of this net, so what did our boys want to do? Pick up all the balls and throw them at each other, of course. These balls are hard, and it hurts when you get hit with one. They were running around like the crazy 9 year-olds they are, trying to tag each other with lacrosse balls, paying no attention to their frazzled den leaders who were trying to keep them in some kind of order so we could actually accomplish something. The lacrosse coach came over and none too kindly reminded us that we might get hit by a stray ball, so it would be better to move away from the field. In other words, "Get those boys out of here! They're distracting my team!"

So we moved away to the grassy area to do the softball toss. The boys really enjoyed this. So much so that they didn't want to do anything else. They were supposed to have two tries, but kept begging for just one more. We could have spent the rest of the time tossing the softball, which is great, but they're supposed to be accomplishing certain achievements, so we had to pry them away to do the next thing. Since the lacrosse team was still on the field, which is surrounded by the track, we decided to do the 50 yard dash in the grass field behind the baseball field, which is a bit of a walk from the track. We've already discovered that walking anywhere with these boys is like herding squirrels. By the time we got them all in some semblance of a line to start the race, it was time to head back to the church, which is another walk through a playground with a huge slide. Squirrels, I tell you. They see the nut (the slide) and scatter, racing frantically towards it, trying to beat the other squirrels to the prize. When one squirrel reaches it and they realize they can't all go down at the same time, they spot another nut (the monkey bars) and dash towards that, and quickly disperse from there, leaving two out-of-breath den leaders in their wake.

So, when it came time to figure out the field trip this month, I had a flash of inspiration. The boys' gymnastic coach is in our ward, so I called him up and asked if it might be possible for the boys to visit the gymnastics room and have a mini-gymnastics class. "Sure!" he said, and for a small fee ($5.00 for each boy) he arranged a coach for an hour to teach the boys the basics. All I had to do was stand there and take pictures! The boys loved it!