Cardston Rugby.

So Cami Hill is a teacher-type friend of mine. She is doing a practicum out in Cardston, and last Saturday she calls me up and asks me to teach her how to throw a rugby ball. I am more than happy to help her out, and we get to talking about her sudden interest in the game. She is pretty much in charge of all the girls gym classes at CJHS, and they had come to the rugby portion of the year, and she really had no idea how to go about that.

So me being the over achiever that I am, jumped right on that. I taught her how to pass a ball, went over a couple simple ball handling drills. Then I asked her how many days she was teaching rugby, she answered '4'. I don't really know what I was thinking at the time, but I offered to come help her teach for a day. She thought that would be a great idea. And thats the story of how Alaya became a gym teacher. Jokes. So I set her up with some drills for Monday and decided to go out on tuesday.

Luckily the weather was pretty nice, not too cold, not too windy. First class started at 8:40. Class of grade 8s. I wasn't really sure about how to go about this whole thing, how much control I could take, but it seemed to go fairly smoothly, we worked on a few passing drills and played touch for a little bit. It was odd, definately took getting used to. They were the youngest girls i've ever taught. And their classes were only 47 minutes long, so including time to change, and taking attendance ect, we had about 25 minutes of actual outside time, minus about 8 minutes for their 'warm up'. Also, i've been so used to coaching as opposed to teaching... like when I coach, its a team of girls that all WANT to be there and participate and work. Teaching, you have a class of some really gung-ho girls, some that really don't want to be there, or do anything, and some that don't care either way.

All the classes went pretty much the same way, I taught one grade 7 class, two grade 8 classes and two grade nine classes. The 7 and 8 classes went pretty much the same way, practice passing, play buggers. I gained quite the appreciation for what teachers do. SO MUCH REPITITION. To teach the same thing to every class, answer the same questions...

The grade 9s, I could have a little more fun with cause they had seem rugby before. The 7s had no idea what was going on, the 8s had a few memories from the previous year, but the grade 9s had two years of it, and they seem to catch on quicker than 12 year olds.

The afternoon 9 class was kind of funny, it was a bigger class, and I think the more kids there are in one place, the slower their mental processes work... so I had to explain things a little more, but still not to the extent I had to explain to the 7s. We moved from passing to offense/defense drills, which was awesome. The best moment of the day came when I was describing how the offense alligned. I compared it to how geese fly... So I said "You know how geese fly right? Thats how you are going to run." Then one of the girls starts flapping her arms like a goose, with a really confused look on her face, she asked me "Like this?" I lost it. Usually i'm pretty good about kids being ....um.... special. But I honestly couldn't keep my laughter in. I felt kind of bad. And this is why i'm not a teacher... She was a good sport about it, and we all had a good laugh. Ridiculous.

The morning grade 9 class was my favorite though, there were only about 12 girls in it, so we ripped through passing a defense and they legit played a good game of buggers. They understood offside, I would blow my whistle to make them freeze, and the girls would look around recognize they were in the wrong place and fix it. It was beautiful.

I've wanted Cardston to get a rugby team for years. They would be so good. If the grade 9s understood it, the High School girls would totally understand it. F'real, they need to get on that.