On May 25th 2007 36 students were locked in from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. 12 hours of
Pizza, Dodgeball, Mountain Dew, Popcorn, Basketball, Candy, Soccer, Human
NASCAR, Wii, Dr. Mario, Scatter Ball, Mario Strikers, Dance Dance Revolution,
Berries and Cream, Rick "the pied piper" Creecy campfire stories, and more
pizza. A few stayed up the entire night. Regrettably we did not film much during
the evening. Here is what we did get.
Window? What Window?
On April 18th at Breakaway the elementary and junior high students took
turns shooting water balloons at the old barn on our property with points being
awarded for hitting certain parts of the barn. Boards and a screen door were put
in place to protect the windows. When we were done some students went to look at
the barn and removed boards that were protecting the windows (this is to explain
to the elders why there are no boards over the windows to the left in this
video). After the students returned for snacks to the commons the high school
students who help out on Wednesday nights decided to fire one last thing, a toy
a student brought (some sort of hard plastic Nintendo thing). Dan Guinn shot it
while Jacob and Zach held the sides. Joey is the one who is quick to try to
cover the whole thing up. Anyway, hope you get a good laugh.
Facing the Revenator
The Following Was written on Pastor Tony's Blog on May 18th 2007.
This video clip demands an explanation lest you think I am some kind of
psycho.
In 1997, when I came to Redeemer, our school (Westminster
Christian Academy) had just 23 students. They needed a P.E. teacher so yours
truly volunteered. I told our headmaster that I had soccer coaching experience
and that was about it. I was very up front about what I would teach- when the
weather was good, we would play football, kickball, or soccer outside. When the
weather was bad, we would play
dodgeball inside.
No tumbling, circuit training, parachute exercising, skipping, long-jumping,
esteem-building lame stuff from me. I taught P.E. at Westminster for 4 years. We
played an enormous amount of
dodgeball. It was
awesome.
The school went from 23 students in 1997 to over 110 students in 2001. At the
end of the class
dodgeball games I would challenge the entire class to a game. I would try
to beat 20 or 30 students alone. It was lots of fun and became the stuff of
legend. One particular highlight happened my last year of teaching when I
taunted the older students (our school goes up to 8th
grade) to a game while I played in a wheel-chair! I actually beat them. They
haven't stopped talking about that. Parents even needle me about that stunt to
this day. Westminster has long since hired a real PE teacher (I even hear she
doesn't encourage head shots...what kind of whimpy generation are we
training?).
Anyways, I've been "retired" from
dodgeball for
over 5 years. I think I made a short, one night comeback 3 years ago during a
youth lock-in, but otherwise, I've been enjoying
dodgeball
retirement for some time. A couple weeks ago, one of the parents who remembered
the "Pastor Tony
Dodgeball days", asked if I would play one last game against our 7th
graders and outgoing 8th
graders during the 8th
grade graduation celebration night. I was reluctant at first, due to my lack of
dodgeball
physical conditioning (one hates to destroy his legacy...see Joe Louis against
Rocky Marciano...), however, my competitive side
began to get
the best of me and I accepted the challenge. Since it was revealed to the
students that I would be taking them on in one last game, it has become apparent
there are many in the 7th
and 8th grade
classes who participated back in the day and would love to get a shot
at me now that they are older and more skilled and I am past
dodgeball prime.
