Kimball Hall Winter Olympics

Posted by Braden

We had another hall activity this past week: the first-ever Kimball Hall Winter Olympics Classic!

Why did we do it? Well, first of all, it satisfied the requirements of a "cultural" activity: the boys were assigned to teams from different countries, which we provided trivia facts about. We also played the national anthem of the winning team at the closing ceremonies. On the program proposal, I stressed that the boys felt cooped up in the cold weather and desperately needed outdoor physical play. Also, since a lot of the boys will be leaving on foreign missions this summer, it was an opportunity to get them excited for experiences that involve other countries. That's what I wrote down, anyway. For the most part, these boys just wanted to have a ball playing outside in the snow.

Then it didn't snow for two weeks. And all the snow that we did have melted. So we adjusted. The event began with the opening ceremonies. We split the boys into countries (we decided to just go with two, Ireland and Spain). We then passed a torch through the building (using a big flashlight since open flames aren't allowed in the buildings, particularly not when they're being carried through multiple flights of stairs by running boys). We blasted the Olympic theme song and officially let the games begin!

The first event was icicle archery! With no icicles, however, we used dough balls! The boys threw the balls from the third-floor balcony down to a target that we had on the ground. The second event was snowball shotput! With no snowballs, however, we used a volleyball! The third event was a sled race! With no snow, well, the boys didn't have a hard time making those sleds fly through the grass and dirt. The last event was going to be beach volleyball in the snow, but due to melted snow, the courts were sandy swamps. Instead, we had a Popsicle relay throughout our hall: run up three flights of stairs, down three flights, pass off the Popsicle, repeat. The last guys to get the Popsicles had to eat them to finish the race.

At the closing ceremonies we had doughnuts and apple juice for all, and pounds (literally, I bought three pounds) of candy to be divided between the two winning teams—the winning team got two pounds. Much fun was had by all, even without the snow!