Sports Day (Literally)

Today is Sports Day for the First graders. It is not a traditional Sports Day but a Ball Games Day. All of the kids changed into their Sports tracksuits and headed to the gymnasium; girls in cerise and boys in blue. They sat aligned in their rows during the Sports Day Opening Ceremony.

Next, they all spaced out in their lines and did a warm-up routine run by one of the students who stood on the stage. He shouted, "ich, nee, san shi," and the other students would chorus together, "go, rok, shich, hatch". It was amazing to see these 350 bodies swinging their arms and stretching all in unison. Once they had finished they all shuffled forwards to their original lines.

The boys headed outside to the track (a big patch of dirt, no asphalt or grass) and the girls stayed in the gym. Boys played basketball and soccer for the day and the girls played volleyball. So it was actually a "Sports Day"!

I stayed in the gym and watched the girls play (which I glad about as it was raining outside). The members of the volleyball club worked efficiently to set up the volleyball nets, pull across the huge mesh curtain to divide the gym into two courts and then they started to do warm up drills. There were 8 teams and only 4 played at one time, so many girls were sent upstairs to watch from the balcony.

There were some very interesting differences between playing Volleyball at Jr High in Japan and playing in Pt Augusta.

*They play 10 kids a side.
*They decide which team serves first by playing rock, paper, scissors.
*They have 4 hits to get the ball back over the net.
*The server has 2 shots at serving, like in tennis.
*The first team to score 25 points in the winner, regardless of the score of the other team.

The girls were very enthusiastic about playing and liked to high-5 each other after winning a point. There were some pretty talented kids playing and some pretty ordinary ones playing too, which made for interesting viewing. All-in-all it was a fun day. I'm looking forward to the conventional Sports Day that is held next semester.