Soon, I promise, I’ll write a blog that is not about the relationship between the student-athletes at Wesleyan and the students at The Macdonough School. But after just recently completing the “Recess at Wesleyan” event, many of us, student-athletes and coaches, are still buzzing about it here in the Freeman Athletic Center. And truth be told, I'm still beaming.
What you may not know is, over last three years, Wesleyan Athletics has partnered with a local school to have some of their students over in April for recess with us in the enormous Bacon Fieldhouse. The teachers and principal have always allowed the “best behaved” to attend to encourage positive school behavior.
This year, we decided to up the ante by working with Macdonough’s school wide behavior policy SURFS (Self-responsibility, Understanding, Respect, Fairness and Safety). On February 1st, a number of student athletes and myself visited Macdonough to talk about the importance of SURFS. We also let the students know that those who followed SURFS would get tickets for the chance to attend “Recess at Wesleyan”. And have recess with us in the Bacon Field House. From then on, when we made our Friday recess visits, any students we saw following SURFS, would get tickets from us as well as teachers and staff.
The stage was set for Thursday’s Recess at Wesleyan. Jon Romeo, Macdonough’s principal, and I went through the final logistics. Kickball, Basketball and a Carnival Circuit would comprise the three stations. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students would spend 20 minutes at each station. One hour in total. Area for the bus to park- check. Permission slips-check. Supplies- kickballs footballs, Frisbees, bean bags, soccer balls and basketballs – Check.
E-mails, Facebook posts, tweets, text messages- were all part of the effort by the students of Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and myself to make sure that coming off of Easter break our student-athletes would remember to attend the event.
“3rd Annual Recess at Wesleyan - 12pm-1pm on Thursday, April 4th in Bacon Fieldhouse – Be There!”
Walking through the corridors of the Freeman Athletic Center telling all the student-athletes I see- “Don’t forget Recess this Thursday, 12pm-1pm in the fieldhouse!”
Sitting in my office on Wednesday, I heard some of our student-athletes in the hall discussing Recess at Wesleyan.
“Yeah, the last two years were a lot of fun. It’s this Friday, I think. A bunch of us are planning on going over to Macdonough.”
I shoot out from behind my desk and catch them in the hall to correct them. “Thursday. Thursday. It’s on Thursday from 12pm-1pm. And it’s here in the fieldhouse!”
“Thanks, Coach!”
Now the worrying begins that we may not have enough student-athletes to man the stations. So more emails are sent out, this time to all the coaches.
Text messages are sent to our two co-presidents of SAAC, Kaylin Berger ‘13 and Adam Kaiser ‘13, to get a little reassurance we will have enough help. I get it quickly. "Coach everyone loves the event and the kids at Macdonough. They’ll be there."
On the day of the event, the basketball hoops are lowered, kickball bases are put in position, the stations are set and ready to go. Still waiting for our student-athletes to begin showing up, and the text comes in (as I am told all the time, “No one ever calls anymore Coach.”). “Problems with the mascot costume.”
You would think, "It can’t be that hard to get the mascot costume". Let me assure you, that is false. It is not easy to obtain the Wesleyan Cardinal mascot outfit. Even though we had it reserved weeks ago, someone else had the costume and would be driving it down for an event in NYC. A couple of our student-athletes over hear me trying to make sense of this and give me a, “Coach, we got this.”
“You’ve got 30 minutes.”, I yell as they run out of the field house to track down the Cardinal mascot costume.
Meanwhile, a beautiful scene had started to unfold. Wesleyan student-athletes and coaches began to show up in droves, from all of our different teams. My concerns about not having enough of our students to man the stations dissipated and we have the biggest turnout for a SAAC event in three years.
Confident that we are prepared in the field house, we walk out front to the bus loop to prepare to greet the bus carrying the students from Macdonough. Just then a car pulls up and one of our student-athletes from the men’s hockey team gets out with the Cardinal mascot outfit. He jumps in the costume puts on the mask and is zipped up just as the bus from Macdonough pulls in.
The students excitedly pile off the bus. They have worked hard to earn SURFS tickets to get here. There is excitement, pride and anticipation in their eyes as they exchange high fives with our mascot.
In a nearby classroom within the Freeman Athletic Center we get the students split into their respective grades before some of our students get them fired up for the event.
ARE YOU READY FOR KICKBALL! YEAHHH! ARE YOU READY FOR BASKETBALL!!! YEAHH! We run into the fieldhouse, the kids’ eyes widen in astonishment at the size of the fieldhouse. I think back as a 4th grader and how huge this field house would have looked.
The students are given directions - “3rd graders to Kickball, 4th graders to Basketball and 5th graders to the Carnival Circuit!” And the chaos begins.
Members of our soccer teams yelling “GOALLLLLL” as one of the Macdonough students kicks it into the net. Our placekicker for the football team kicks a kick ball over the top of a net that must be at least 50 feet high to the student’s amazement. Members of our basketball teams play a full court game with the students. The game resembles something from the globetrotters with behind the back passes and razzle dazzle galore. Teachers from Macdonough were getting involved too, running from station to station and participating with the students.
After about forty minutes, the final whistle blew. Time to get a quick picture of the whole group before the mascot costume has to be in its way to NYC. Our students and their students arm in arm for a group photo. Smiles, hugs and handshakes everywhere as teachers and students from Macdonough head out to their bus waiting outside.
As the dust settled a number of our student-athletes were still hanging around laughing about the great time they had. Checking over the missed e-mails on my phone, one of our students calls over to me, “So Coach McDonald, what’s next?”.
Hmmm, I thought to myself, what is next?
“Well”, I responded, “just got an email here from the North End Action Team about a clean up and beautification day a couple Saturdays from now.”
"Sounds good coach, let us know the info and we’ll start getting the word out.”
That does sound good, but for now I am going to enjoy the afterglow of this for just alittle while longer.
