(#20) Goalball Retrieving At The Junior Blind Olympics – Part 4 (Ball Retriever? No? Wait, Ye-yeah! Ball Retriever)

May 6, 2014

Picking up from yesterday –

– and things we can learn from the volunteer leader…  As I said, we already had jobs on our name tags. But then she was assigning us different jobs.

Now, look. I’m a team player and if things need to change, I’ll change and adapt. That’s fine. But why do you want to change and adapt to things that don’t need to be changed for any reason.

I was standing there across from someone assigned to safety gear. And she asked me, “Hey, do you want to do safety gear?” I didn’t want to be a diva or a jerk, but since she phrased it as a question, I said in a very nice way that I’d prefer to do ball retrieval if I could, but you know, whatever she needed.

She assigned me to safety gear. Then when she looked at the person assigned to safety gear and thought about what they should be doing, you could see her running through what she needed in her head. Then she assigned him ball retrieval! What was the point of assigning us new tasks when we were both there already assigned?

This is another example of when it would’ve been good to have been keeping a list so you can actually know if you’re short in any area, not just judge it based on what’s right in front of you.

I’m really for any challenge, but I was more excited by the prospect of trying to run around getting out-of-bounds balls as quickly as possible than I was by putting elbow pads and knee pads on people all day.

As more people started coming in from opening ceremony – and she realized she did have everyone she needed – she graciously allowed me to move back to ball retrieval. (Phew!)

And I spent the rest of the day chasing balls and calling goals. (There were no super close calls, so it wasn’t that pressure-filled. I just had to raise my arm when the ball went past the line.)

In one of the corners, a ball retriever looked just like Santa. It was pretty funny. He had a very round belly. So, he barely ever bent over to get the ball. He’d kick it somewhere or do some foot magic to get it up to his hands.

He tapped out before the end of the day. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m making fun of him. I thought it was nice that he volunteered his time. Just pointing out it was a funny little act to watch during the day…

And I’ll pick up here tomorrow.

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