Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Good sports award @ Victorian SYG
I'm quite excited about this. During the Vic SYG, instead of just a committee nominating who wins the fair play or team spirit award like in QLD, in Vic both awards are combined into a good sports award, and anyone can write up a nomination for other teams based on what you observe over the weekend.
We knew that Ringwood were great, so we wrote a nomination for them and were stoked when they won. I must admit that I was even more excited when they published the nominations on the website and they showed that we had received four of them ourselves - the only team to receive multiple nominations! I was especially happy as I was scared during touch that we might have been arrogant as we told others how to play the game - but no! Very happy here.
Here are the nominations:
Good Sports Award 2005
Ringwood Church of Christ (winning nomination)
Ringwood were a great sport because they had never met us before, yet they adopted us and gave us tents, food, couches, cheering as well as providing their friendship. Wherever we went they were always cheering us, themselves and everyone else enthusiastically. Most importantly we noticed they structured their teams to encourage participation and helping younger players rather than trying to be the best of the best. From Queensland (Springwood Church of Christ)
Monash 3 on 3 team
Substituting better players off and letting young guys have a go even if it meant losing
Cameron Doolsh from Blackburn - Good sport / honest at pool
Springwood
Great supporters of everyone
York St Ladies A Basketball
Excellent, fun and good sports
QueenslandThe group of players from Queensland in the Sunday morning session of Open Touch Football were being very considerate towards the players in SBC (Shepparton Baptist Church) in ways such as: they didn't argue with Umpires, they shook hands after the games, gave out encouraging comments to opposing team, and were generally just great sports
- Adam Lawrence (SBC player)
Stonnington Church of Christ
In Indoor Soccer, one of their boys tripped over one of our players and he kicked the ball away. He then picked her up and gave her back the ball and made sure she was alright
- Latrobe Regional Church of Christ
York St Basketball C Team
For placing a higher emphasis on making it fun than on winning. They made their games highly enjoyable and really funny to watch. Some of the things they did included playing tunnelball and stacks on, when one girl fell on the opposing team missed a shot they kept passing it back until she got it in, a tall plaer tapped in a couple of shots for their opposition that would have missed, and much much more!
Warragul CCW
Lent us their netball bibs and cheered for us in U18 netball Final
- Templestowe Baptist
Queensland
We played touch football against them and they were so patient and explained the rules as we went along
- Templestowe Baptist
Queensland again!
Queensland team always gave three cheers to oppopsing teams after the event - win lose or draw! Always fare and didn't argue with decisions even when they may have been dubious - they just accepted them. Encouraging and willing to share their knowledge of touch footy with all the teams in their division. Also in touch footy they let mistakes we made be replayed to teach us. Friendly bunch - very deserving!
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We knew that Ringwood were great, so we wrote a nomination for them and were stoked when they won. I must admit that I was even more excited when they published the nominations on the website and they showed that we had received four of them ourselves - the only team to receive multiple nominations! I was especially happy as I was scared during touch that we might have been arrogant as we told others how to play the game - but no! Very happy here.
Here are the nominations:
Good Sports Award 2005
Ringwood Church of Christ (winning nomination)
Ringwood were a great sport because they had never met us before, yet they adopted us and gave us tents, food, couches, cheering as well as providing their friendship. Wherever we went they were always cheering us, themselves and everyone else enthusiastically. Most importantly we noticed they structured their teams to encourage participation and helping younger players rather than trying to be the best of the best. From Queensland (Springwood Church of Christ)
Monash 3 on 3 team
Substituting better players off and letting young guys have a go even if it meant losing
Cameron Doolsh from Blackburn - Good sport / honest at pool
Springwood
Great supporters of everyone
York St Ladies A Basketball
Excellent, fun and good sports
QueenslandThe group of players from Queensland in the Sunday morning session of Open Touch Football were being very considerate towards the players in SBC (Shepparton Baptist Church) in ways such as: they didn't argue with Umpires, they shook hands after the games, gave out encouraging comments to opposing team, and were generally just great sports
- Adam Lawrence (SBC player)
Stonnington Church of Christ
In Indoor Soccer, one of their boys tripped over one of our players and he kicked the ball away. He then picked her up and gave her back the ball and made sure she was alright
- Latrobe Regional Church of Christ
York St Basketball C Team
For placing a higher emphasis on making it fun than on winning. They made their games highly enjoyable and really funny to watch. Some of the things they did included playing tunnelball and stacks on, when one girl fell on the opposing team missed a shot they kept passing it back until she got it in, a tall plaer tapped in a couple of shots for their opposition that would have missed, and much much more!
Warragul CCW
Lent us their netball bibs and cheered for us in U18 netball Final
- Templestowe Baptist
Queensland
We played touch football against them and they were so patient and explained the rules as we went along
- Templestowe Baptist
Queensland again!
Queensland team always gave three cheers to oppopsing teams after the event - win lose or draw! Always fare and didn't argue with decisions even when they may have been dubious - they just accepted them. Encouraging and willing to share their knowledge of touch footy with all the teams in their division. Also in touch footy they let mistakes we made be replayed to teach us. Friendly bunch - very deserving!
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Victorian State Youth Games
On Friday we flew down to Melbourne. We had booked an 8-seater tarago, but we accepted Budget's offer of a complementary upgrade to 12 seater bus. This gave us heaps of space for luggage and let us drive others around during the weekend, but meant the car was very large and high, and the wind blew it around heaps on the road. The weather driving to the SYG was terrible. It poured rain most of the way, and the wind was awful. My hands were sore from holding onto the steering wheel so tightly, but we got there safely. We flew in at 7:25, drove out of the airport at 8 and arrived at 9:30pm, just in time to here them announce the 2005 State Youth Games are now open - and we had missed the opening ceremony. Bummer.
We found Ringwood Church had put up 2 tents for us that they had provided, and we then got another 2 tents from the SYG admin centre and we put them up. The Ringwood camp wasn't quite what we expected. There was a sea of tents surrounding a large marquee, about 22 paces by 7 paces. It had a high roof and clear walls around the side, stopping the breeze and making for a warm temperature inside. At one end of the marquee was a series of tables encircling the kitchen, with a BBQ like mine at home, stove, microwave and a cold room. They had lights on in the marquee and shining onto the tents, plus a kitchen sink for running water, and even an instant boiling water tap like the Church has so we could make milo any time throughout the weekend.
Everyone had brought their own chairs, plus they had picked up a few couches just for the weekend, making the atmosphere rather comfortable. At one end there was a flame heater that blew warm air into the marquee.
About 15 minutes after the opening ceremony started, they launched into the team motivation event. This event was a voluntary sport, where teams competed in front of a crowd to motivate their people. It was almost cheer-leading, partly war cries, mostly teams making up songs and singing them to the crowd. They were rather creative, but none were particularly catchy enough to want to take back home - although I can't get Dandenong dandenong, dandy nong nong nong to the tune of pizza hut out of my head.
Afterwards I explored the rest of the site. The opening ceremony was in a massive building that could fit about 3000 people in it, all on chairs that they brought in themselves. Adjacent to this was a room perhaps one third the size that was used for a rather popular disco, snack bar, Josiah stall and some globe ride where you spin around upside down. On the other side of the snack bar was a café with several tables, juke box and freezing breeze. There was no real ambiance there. The disco was quite popular, mainly with the younger crowd. It had a DJ with funky lights, and everyone standing together and sort of moving and talking with the music, rather than dancing per se.
There were about 3 showers and 3 toilets in the guys, of quite a good standard, plus a hired truck with about 13 male showers crammed up one end. When we showered it was a tight fit, but it worked fine and there seemed to be enough for everyone, even with the huge numbers.
There was also a movie tent, with sound system and big screen with projector set up permanently. In the evenings this was used for the Mario carts event, while later at night they showed national treasure and the incredibles, both nice safe movies. The Mario carts competition always drew a massive crowd, complete with running commentary, and the movie was probably half full each night.
Sacred space was another tent set up by urban seed, a forgy type group doing an alternative worship space. I only went in once, but felt too tired to be bothered. Not the most dedicated attitude I know, but I knew I'd be asleep in minutes if I slowed down there.
Throughout the weekend the Ringwood team were often gather together for a team meeting. It wasn't hard to get everyone together, as they were almost always in the marquee. The few that weren't were gathered outside the fires they had lit outside. These were inside tins half a metre in radius and about the same high. I got the impression that Victorians were more used to having fire around and weren't into pyromania as much as Queenslanders, as I would have been very uncomfortable with as much fire as they had there back home.
The team meetings set the scene for the weekend, told people where they had to be by when, established their ground rules and told people what teams they were in. It created a good atmosphere for the entire weekend.
We slept fairly well, but when I awoke it was bucketing rain and it was pitch black. I checked my watch and found it was 6:30 - I'd assumed I had hours until getting up. It took ages to get dressed in the dark, without touching the tents sides. By the time I got out I saw people running around with rain jackets everywhere, but not letting the rain slow them down. Just after lunch time the rain stopped and never really came back again.
For breakfast each morning we had toast and cereal. Noone seemed to care that there was no hot breakfast. For lunches we had hot dogs in a rain shelter on Saturday, bread rolls that we ordered in tuck shop bags for Sunday, and pizza on Monday afternoon. Dinner was pretty flash too - pasta and some nice meat on Saturday and a roast on Sunday night, with apple crumble one night and mousse the other. Not bad at all! They even threw in chocolate bars with lunch - summer rolls and something that was new to me.
After breakfast we drove off to B grade volleyball, while Niel caught a lift with someone heading to chess. Volleyball was at the Bellbird park leisure centre. We had 2 adjacent courts in one room that was one competition, then another 2 courts in the room next door. The b grades competition was divided into B1, B2 and B3, with B 3 somewhere else. This meant that there were 3 different B grade winners, all of whom received a medal and the same points. This idea annoyed me at first, but does mean more people get to win, and I suspect reduces the overall competitive nature of the event, and stops groups from comparing their results with each other as easily.
Across the road was the very muddy open soccer, and in the same building somewhere was squash. The standard of volleyball wasn't too bad. We won 3 from 4 games in the round robins, only narrowly winning several of them. We lost to Blackurn, then lost to them again when we made the semis. We played Warragul for third place and got a win there. We were happy with how we played. Meanwhile Niel made the semis of chess and lost there.
Although we stayed dry, others had played touch footy, Frisbee, soccer and netball in pouring rain, with no interruption. They are just used to the rain and keep on playing.
In the afternoon we went to Warragul regional college to play ultimate Frisbee. This was near where we had lunch, near the massive netball courts and near the indoor sports centre where they had a swimming pool and basketball courts. The Frisbee courts were quite small, probably 20 metres wide and maybe 50 long. Although it was small, we never felt too cramped for room and thoroughly enjoyed playing. Before the games started we met some guys from Werribee who taught us some moves and showed us a bit of how to play.
We fortunately played 3 easyish teams first and actually managed to beat them! We were amazed that we could be so successful without knowing how to play. Our third game was a bit embarrassing, losing about 7-4 or so to Boronia, who had one blond guy who would hang out in the end zone and the Frisbee would just miraculously land in his hands! I joked that we were letting them score heaps so we could see what their scoring technique was so we could stop them in the finals. We snuck through to the finals again, and were drawn to play Werribee, which scared us a bit. We played as hard as we could, and just managed to beat them by a point, although their giant player fell and hurt his knee a minute before the end. In the final we had Boronia again. Our plan was to put Jason onto their blond guy, and I chased another guy who kept passing it to him. Amazingly our plan worked, and we ended up beating them 7-4 and became the winners overall!
We drove home listening to the SYG radio station broadcast from the venue. It wasn't particularly well advertised, but was fun to know it was there. Niel finished second in the squash.
That night we had showers, enjoyed dinner and went to the worship service. The music was good, the speaker was brilliant - Darryl Gardner from YFC NZ and they had a play that was great but went for too long. I was too tired to stand for most of it. They didn't give points updates, so we had no idea how we were going.
Afterwards I wandered around exploring the campsite. Most sites have a marquee of some form set up. Several had people sleeping inside the marquees instead of tents. I suspect that would be easier but not cheaper. Some people were in sheds, there were a few caravans, and some groups were just huddled around a campfire looking quite cold. I visited Neale Meredith for a while at Blackburn, where they had heaps of tables for eating dinner in their marquee.
A recurring theme throughout the weekend unofficially was an anti-Blackburn sentiment. They had won it 7-8 years in a row, and having that printed in the front page of the handbook didn’t help. Evidently whenever they were mentioned or were on stage in previous years the crowd had begun booing, and all other teams had set them up as the ones to beat. Neale said they had never been coming along just for the wins, but others suggested some Blackburnians were inviting attack by rubbing it in that they were the best.
Like most nights I got to bed around 12. They have the rule that from 12pm you must be at your own site.
On Sunday we played touch football. I enjoyed it heaps, and we were undefeated, but many of the guys were frustrated. Most of our team was quite good at touch football, and the standard wasn't all that great. The fields were the same as for Frisbee, which meant they were about half the real size. Unfortunately, where in Frisbee there is an end zone that you have to score in between, they assume that touch was the same, and made you score in between the 5m line and the try line. Neither the referees nor the other teams seemed to understand the rules of the game. The referees all said they knew how to play, but all had their own peculiar rules. One said the attacking team couldn't start until the defensive team was back their five metres. Another said the defense only had to get back 2 meters. One let acting half get touched on the first play. One let the ball go to ground as long as it went backwards. And so it went on. We felt really bad while playing, as we had to keep on saying "That's not in the rules" whenever a team did anything. So our guys reffed a heap of games to help the others get used to the real rules, but we were scared we'd come across as arrogant know-it-alls who wanted it all our own way. Kim had been playing air hockey, and won her first two games.
During a break I chatted with Brendan Hunt, the coordinator of SYG WA. He said the WA event was very different to VIC. They had a service on Sunday night only, had definite winners of each event (instead of B1, B2 etc), had everyone sleeping indoors within driving distance of the main site, and gave the groups Saturday night to do whatever they wanted to as a group.
In the afternoon we went along to A grade netball, which was a bit scary. In our first game we lost 18-1, which was rather humbling, but were pleased when that team went on to come first overall. We played much better after that game as we got into the swing of things and won the rest of our games, although we just missed the finals, finishing 5th. We had imports from Ringwood help us out with the girls - 2 Sarahs, a Melissa and someone else.
Kim and Dave had top do their Mario carts race when we got back, and both did well to finish fourth. We watched more of the aerobics tonight, which is done to a very high standard. The groups had a song they had to do various moves to. It was a bit “Bring it on” without the flips and raises. The teams put huge amounts of practice into this, and there were over a thousand watching and cheering wildly, especially for the guys. The service that night was good again, with a longer sermon telling us not to be boring nice Christians but people who really follow Jesus. Afterwards there was a skate competition again which wasn’t very interesting.
Afterwards Jason and I went to the admin centre to see what we could learn. We looked at all the trophies that were being awarded. They are all a lot cheaper and smaller than we do in Queensland, but still looked great. Team winners were given engraved medals, while overall winners were given a trophy, with the same size regardless of category – small, medium, large, good sport, percentage etc.
The admin centre is open from early morning to late night. They receive all results and input them there, keep lost property, sell shirts (but not until Sunday night), coordinate the coordinators, process registrations on Friday night and answer any questions that come up. They act as a fix-it team for anything that happens, with a mobile to contact the appropriate people as needed. They are also armed with a PA system that communicates with the entire campsite.
We had a look at the computer system for a fair while. It is a very big program, with about 250meg of data by the end of the weekend. They use MS Access, and the one program integrates all data, from automatic registrations, to draw calculation, to inputting sports results and providing reports to each team on how they went. The program knows what data needs to be input and gives a percentage update so they know how far they have gone with each set of data. For any number of teams in a specific team sport, they have programmed into the computer how the draw should work out. They stay up late each night processing the info. They have been building the program for 4-5 years and are consistently improving it. We shouldn’t need a program that complicated until we have large numbers of individual sports, even if numbers increase, but we do need to head in that direction.
The next morning we had very little to do. We packed our tents and bags, trying to dry the tents as much as possible. Once all of Ringwood was packed up we headed over to the Warragul Leisure Centre to watch the finals. Netball had finished, so we saw the B basketball finals, then the aerobics winners, followed by the A grade final. James was amazed how in A grade the players didn’t talk back to the ref, even when they made dodgy decisions! The playing standard of A was very high also.
Immediately after the Basketball the closing ceremony began. We saw the team motivation winner perform, heard a lot of thank you’s and had the winners of small, medium, overall Churches announced, plus the good sports award. For good sports they asked people to write out nominations for other teams throughout the weekend and hand in by Sunday night. We were pleased our nomination gave Ringwood the win. We’d mentioned how they looked after us so well, cheered for us, themselves and everyone else, plus structured their team to look after younger members and encourage mass participation. Monash won the overall, while we came 6th in the small Churches section and came second in the Russ Croxford (percentage trophy) by 0.22%. If we had won 2 more points we would have won!
After the ceremony we ate, said good-bye and drove to the airport, stopping for a while at St Kilda for a Luna Park visit and walk up the main street.
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We found Ringwood Church had put up 2 tents for us that they had provided, and we then got another 2 tents from the SYG admin centre and we put them up. The Ringwood camp wasn't quite what we expected. There was a sea of tents surrounding a large marquee, about 22 paces by 7 paces. It had a high roof and clear walls around the side, stopping the breeze and making for a warm temperature inside. At one end of the marquee was a series of tables encircling the kitchen, with a BBQ like mine at home, stove, microwave and a cold room. They had lights on in the marquee and shining onto the tents, plus a kitchen sink for running water, and even an instant boiling water tap like the Church has so we could make milo any time throughout the weekend.
Everyone had brought their own chairs, plus they had picked up a few couches just for the weekend, making the atmosphere rather comfortable. At one end there was a flame heater that blew warm air into the marquee.
About 15 minutes after the opening ceremony started, they launched into the team motivation event. This event was a voluntary sport, where teams competed in front of a crowd to motivate their people. It was almost cheer-leading, partly war cries, mostly teams making up songs and singing them to the crowd. They were rather creative, but none were particularly catchy enough to want to take back home - although I can't get Dandenong dandenong, dandy nong nong nong to the tune of pizza hut out of my head.
Afterwards I explored the rest of the site. The opening ceremony was in a massive building that could fit about 3000 people in it, all on chairs that they brought in themselves. Adjacent to this was a room perhaps one third the size that was used for a rather popular disco, snack bar, Josiah stall and some globe ride where you spin around upside down. On the other side of the snack bar was a café with several tables, juke box and freezing breeze. There was no real ambiance there. The disco was quite popular, mainly with the younger crowd. It had a DJ with funky lights, and everyone standing together and sort of moving and talking with the music, rather than dancing per se.
There were about 3 showers and 3 toilets in the guys, of quite a good standard, plus a hired truck with about 13 male showers crammed up one end. When we showered it was a tight fit, but it worked fine and there seemed to be enough for everyone, even with the huge numbers.
There was also a movie tent, with sound system and big screen with projector set up permanently. In the evenings this was used for the Mario carts event, while later at night they showed national treasure and the incredibles, both nice safe movies. The Mario carts competition always drew a massive crowd, complete with running commentary, and the movie was probably half full each night.
Sacred space was another tent set up by urban seed, a forgy type group doing an alternative worship space. I only went in once, but felt too tired to be bothered. Not the most dedicated attitude I know, but I knew I'd be asleep in minutes if I slowed down there.
Throughout the weekend the Ringwood team were often gather together for a team meeting. It wasn't hard to get everyone together, as they were almost always in the marquee. The few that weren't were gathered outside the fires they had lit outside. These were inside tins half a metre in radius and about the same high. I got the impression that Victorians were more used to having fire around and weren't into pyromania as much as Queenslanders, as I would have been very uncomfortable with as much fire as they had there back home.
The team meetings set the scene for the weekend, told people where they had to be by when, established their ground rules and told people what teams they were in. It created a good atmosphere for the entire weekend.
We slept fairly well, but when I awoke it was bucketing rain and it was pitch black. I checked my watch and found it was 6:30 - I'd assumed I had hours until getting up. It took ages to get dressed in the dark, without touching the tents sides. By the time I got out I saw people running around with rain jackets everywhere, but not letting the rain slow them down. Just after lunch time the rain stopped and never really came back again.
For breakfast each morning we had toast and cereal. Noone seemed to care that there was no hot breakfast. For lunches we had hot dogs in a rain shelter on Saturday, bread rolls that we ordered in tuck shop bags for Sunday, and pizza on Monday afternoon. Dinner was pretty flash too - pasta and some nice meat on Saturday and a roast on Sunday night, with apple crumble one night and mousse the other. Not bad at all! They even threw in chocolate bars with lunch - summer rolls and something that was new to me.
After breakfast we drove off to B grade volleyball, while Niel caught a lift with someone heading to chess. Volleyball was at the Bellbird park leisure centre. We had 2 adjacent courts in one room that was one competition, then another 2 courts in the room next door. The b grades competition was divided into B1, B2 and B3, with B 3 somewhere else. This meant that there were 3 different B grade winners, all of whom received a medal and the same points. This idea annoyed me at first, but does mean more people get to win, and I suspect reduces the overall competitive nature of the event, and stops groups from comparing their results with each other as easily.
Across the road was the very muddy open soccer, and in the same building somewhere was squash. The standard of volleyball wasn't too bad. We won 3 from 4 games in the round robins, only narrowly winning several of them. We lost to Blackurn, then lost to them again when we made the semis. We played Warragul for third place and got a win there. We were happy with how we played. Meanwhile Niel made the semis of chess and lost there.
Although we stayed dry, others had played touch footy, Frisbee, soccer and netball in pouring rain, with no interruption. They are just used to the rain and keep on playing.
In the afternoon we went to Warragul regional college to play ultimate Frisbee. This was near where we had lunch, near the massive netball courts and near the indoor sports centre where they had a swimming pool and basketball courts. The Frisbee courts were quite small, probably 20 metres wide and maybe 50 long. Although it was small, we never felt too cramped for room and thoroughly enjoyed playing. Before the games started we met some guys from Werribee who taught us some moves and showed us a bit of how to play.
We fortunately played 3 easyish teams first and actually managed to beat them! We were amazed that we could be so successful without knowing how to play. Our third game was a bit embarrassing, losing about 7-4 or so to Boronia, who had one blond guy who would hang out in the end zone and the Frisbee would just miraculously land in his hands! I joked that we were letting them score heaps so we could see what their scoring technique was so we could stop them in the finals. We snuck through to the finals again, and were drawn to play Werribee, which scared us a bit. We played as hard as we could, and just managed to beat them by a point, although their giant player fell and hurt his knee a minute before the end. In the final we had Boronia again. Our plan was to put Jason onto their blond guy, and I chased another guy who kept passing it to him. Amazingly our plan worked, and we ended up beating them 7-4 and became the winners overall!
We drove home listening to the SYG radio station broadcast from the venue. It wasn't particularly well advertised, but was fun to know it was there. Niel finished second in the squash.
That night we had showers, enjoyed dinner and went to the worship service. The music was good, the speaker was brilliant - Darryl Gardner from YFC NZ and they had a play that was great but went for too long. I was too tired to stand for most of it. They didn't give points updates, so we had no idea how we were going.
Afterwards I wandered around exploring the campsite. Most sites have a marquee of some form set up. Several had people sleeping inside the marquees instead of tents. I suspect that would be easier but not cheaper. Some people were in sheds, there were a few caravans, and some groups were just huddled around a campfire looking quite cold. I visited Neale Meredith for a while at Blackburn, where they had heaps of tables for eating dinner in their marquee.
A recurring theme throughout the weekend unofficially was an anti-Blackburn sentiment. They had won it 7-8 years in a row, and having that printed in the front page of the handbook didn’t help. Evidently whenever they were mentioned or were on stage in previous years the crowd had begun booing, and all other teams had set them up as the ones to beat. Neale said they had never been coming along just for the wins, but others suggested some Blackburnians were inviting attack by rubbing it in that they were the best.
Like most nights I got to bed around 12. They have the rule that from 12pm you must be at your own site.
On Sunday we played touch football. I enjoyed it heaps, and we were undefeated, but many of the guys were frustrated. Most of our team was quite good at touch football, and the standard wasn't all that great. The fields were the same as for Frisbee, which meant they were about half the real size. Unfortunately, where in Frisbee there is an end zone that you have to score in between, they assume that touch was the same, and made you score in between the 5m line and the try line. Neither the referees nor the other teams seemed to understand the rules of the game. The referees all said they knew how to play, but all had their own peculiar rules. One said the attacking team couldn't start until the defensive team was back their five metres. Another said the defense only had to get back 2 meters. One let acting half get touched on the first play. One let the ball go to ground as long as it went backwards. And so it went on. We felt really bad while playing, as we had to keep on saying "That's not in the rules" whenever a team did anything. So our guys reffed a heap of games to help the others get used to the real rules, but we were scared we'd come across as arrogant know-it-alls who wanted it all our own way. Kim had been playing air hockey, and won her first two games.
During a break I chatted with Brendan Hunt, the coordinator of SYG WA. He said the WA event was very different to VIC. They had a service on Sunday night only, had definite winners of each event (instead of B1, B2 etc), had everyone sleeping indoors within driving distance of the main site, and gave the groups Saturday night to do whatever they wanted to as a group.
In the afternoon we went along to A grade netball, which was a bit scary. In our first game we lost 18-1, which was rather humbling, but were pleased when that team went on to come first overall. We played much better after that game as we got into the swing of things and won the rest of our games, although we just missed the finals, finishing 5th. We had imports from Ringwood help us out with the girls - 2 Sarahs, a Melissa and someone else.
Kim and Dave had top do their Mario carts race when we got back, and both did well to finish fourth. We watched more of the aerobics tonight, which is done to a very high standard. The groups had a song they had to do various moves to. It was a bit “Bring it on” without the flips and raises. The teams put huge amounts of practice into this, and there were over a thousand watching and cheering wildly, especially for the guys. The service that night was good again, with a longer sermon telling us not to be boring nice Christians but people who really follow Jesus. Afterwards there was a skate competition again which wasn’t very interesting.
Afterwards Jason and I went to the admin centre to see what we could learn. We looked at all the trophies that were being awarded. They are all a lot cheaper and smaller than we do in Queensland, but still looked great. Team winners were given engraved medals, while overall winners were given a trophy, with the same size regardless of category – small, medium, large, good sport, percentage etc.
The admin centre is open from early morning to late night. They receive all results and input them there, keep lost property, sell shirts (but not until Sunday night), coordinate the coordinators, process registrations on Friday night and answer any questions that come up. They act as a fix-it team for anything that happens, with a mobile to contact the appropriate people as needed. They are also armed with a PA system that communicates with the entire campsite.
We had a look at the computer system for a fair while. It is a very big program, with about 250meg of data by the end of the weekend. They use MS Access, and the one program integrates all data, from automatic registrations, to draw calculation, to inputting sports results and providing reports to each team on how they went. The program knows what data needs to be input and gives a percentage update so they know how far they have gone with each set of data. For any number of teams in a specific team sport, they have programmed into the computer how the draw should work out. They stay up late each night processing the info. They have been building the program for 4-5 years and are consistently improving it. We shouldn’t need a program that complicated until we have large numbers of individual sports, even if numbers increase, but we do need to head in that direction.
The next morning we had very little to do. We packed our tents and bags, trying to dry the tents as much as possible. Once all of Ringwood was packed up we headed over to the Warragul Leisure Centre to watch the finals. Netball had finished, so we saw the B basketball finals, then the aerobics winners, followed by the A grade final. James was amazed how in A grade the players didn’t talk back to the ref, even when they made dodgy decisions! The playing standard of A was very high also.
Immediately after the Basketball the closing ceremony began. We saw the team motivation winner perform, heard a lot of thank you’s and had the winners of small, medium, overall Churches announced, plus the good sports award. For good sports they asked people to write out nominations for other teams throughout the weekend and hand in by Sunday night. We were pleased our nomination gave Ringwood the win. We’d mentioned how they looked after us so well, cheered for us, themselves and everyone else, plus structured their team to look after younger members and encourage mass participation. Monash won the overall, while we came 6th in the small Churches section and came second in the Russ Croxford (percentage trophy) by 0.22%. If we had won 2 more points we would have won!
After the ceremony we ate, said good-bye and drove to the airport, stopping for a while at St Kilda for a Luna Park visit and walk up the main street.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
DDP reflections
Just realised haven’t put any thoughts on DDP online yet. Here is what I hoped would stay with me form he DDP:
I would hope to increasingly accept what I have, and be prepared to be satisfied with a lot less than I have now. To consume less resources wastefully. To be more committed than ever to the truths that God will provide all my needs, and the command to be content with what In have now.
I hope to retain a desire for and practice of more communal living, with close relationships, real love, accepting attitudes and spending real time with people.
I hope to remember the idea that I think we’ve been sold a dud with the priesthood of all believers doctrine. I think we’ve interpreted it as saying that everyone needs a job in the Church, not that we are all meant to live holy lives that will connect people outside the Church with God. The Churches of Christ think they are revolutionary for allowing “laity” to serve communion, yet we are just busying up our people and distracting them from their core business.
A desire to encourage others to challenge their faith and not accept what everyone else thinks. I’ve always had this in my head, but over the last few years have let it slip in my actions.
A desire to welcome others to our house and show them hospitality.
A commitment to spend more time at home with my family.
A video, some pictures and a heap of memories.
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Just realised haven’t put any thoughts on DDP online yet. Here is what I hoped would stay with me form he DDP:
I would hope to increasingly accept what I have, and be prepared to be satisfied with a lot less than I have now. To consume less resources wastefully. To be more committed than ever to the truths that God will provide all my needs, and the command to be content with what In have now.
I hope to retain a desire for and practice of more communal living, with close relationships, real love, accepting attitudes and spending real time with people.
I hope to remember the idea that I think we’ve been sold a dud with the priesthood of all believers doctrine. I think we’ve interpreted it as saying that everyone needs a job in the Church, not that we are all meant to live holy lives that will connect people outside the Church with God. The Churches of Christ think they are revolutionary for allowing “laity” to serve communion, yet we are just busying up our people and distracting them from their core business.
A desire to encourage others to challenge their faith and not accept what everyone else thinks. I’ve always had this in my head, but over the last few years have let it slip in my actions.
A desire to welcome others to our house and show them hospitality.
A commitment to spend more time at home with my family.
A video, some pictures and a heap of memories.
