While the ongoing global pandemic has forced everyone to adjust their daily lives for the time being, two California high school teams have managed to keep their (friendly) rivalry alive by way of doing virtual challenges.
Delta League foes Davis Senior High School and Saint Francis High School have been running Zoom meetings for the past few weeks, featuring members of both teams (upwards of 70 swimmers) while doing competitions to have some fun and keep one another busy while stuck in quarantine.
“During these meetings we have played a couple of games including a home scavenger hunt, general trivia, and an awesome video challenge,” Davis head coach John Varley told SwimSwam.
“I think the most exciting activity we gave our swimmers was a “Virtual medley relay” where swimmers got together with four teammates, (either from their own team or mixed between our two teams) and created a medley relay. We got some very creative video submissions and everyone seemed to have a ton of fun. We then showed all the videos at one of our Zoom meetings and had the swimmers vote on their favorite video. There were also a couple coaches videos and a coaches/athletic director video as well.”
You can watch the coaches video on YouTube below:
“The kids (and coaches) really enjoyed putting them together and we had much more engagement on Zoom after doing it.”
As for the rules of the scavenger hunt, it required team members to search their homes for certain items, and they would actually be scored based on how quick they finished each task.
“Swimmers would then rush around their house looking for the object and then come back to the computer, type in ‘Done’ and then present their object,” said Varley. “We scored the game as if it were an actual High School League meet with first place receiving 6 points and then 4-3-2-1 after that. We even submitted the final results to our League Representative to post on the website.”
Under normal circumstances, the two teams would be gearing up for their final meet of the season this weekend. The California state championships (CIF) were scheduled to take place May 15-16 before being cancelled in early April.
Varley says he and Saint Francis coach Adriana Contreras will be brainstorming ideas for the offseason after this was such a hit.
Good job on the creativity, coaches. I’m sorry that you and your athletes have fallen victim to the illogical and panicked decision making by your state leaders.
He’s. That. Guy.
Awesome to see some coaches focusing on mental health during this downtime. Ideally this downtime will give coaches experience managing athletes’ mental health and provide a larger knowledge base within the community for those coaches who want to learn