This past weekend the Lutheran youth from all over the Golden Triangle converged on St John for the Circuit 34 Youth Tournament. This year marks the 56th year the tournament has been occurring in one way or another. The youth are separated by their individual church's youth groups. Five churches were represented, almost all the Lutheran churches in the district.
Below is the schedule. Of course we ran behind lol
The kids competed in several different competitions: Volleyball (boys, girls, and mixed brackets) Boys Basketball (one team played like street ball champs, I gave them points for style so they should have won more games based on my scoring system) Ping pong (mixed pairs and boys and girls' brackets) and the toughest by far...Bible Quiz.
Let me start off by describing the study guide for this Bible Quiz event. 15 pages with top to bottom questions and answers for these kids to memorize. Real life.
Four kids from each group sit at a table with test blinders on each side of them with dry erase boards and markers. Pastor asks a bible question "who was the lady from Endor" (Answer: the Witch of Endor) and the kids have 20 seconds to write their answer, another pastor calls time, and the kids reveal their answers. Each correct answer gets one point so each question can earn four points per team. 20 questions per round and six rounds happen. The kids can sub in and out between rounds. Then there is 2/3 set of rounds for third place then another 2/3 set of rounds for first place. I wish this existed when I was a youth member. My short term memory for tests is the bomb. Long term....not so much. Then again I am not so sure I could have remembered all the biblical names these kids were able to. It was astonishing to see so many questions with all four kids in a team answering it correctly. This was a real proud moment for all the adult church members hearing their kids answer so much about the bible.
Ping pong was very spectacular in the later rounds. We could have crowds of 10 to 15 people cheering on the kids. My favorite quote from the girls championship game was a sweet lady who asked me where our winner practiced at? "Does she have a ping pong table at home"? Haha she does not; she is just that good.
I have never watched so much volleyball than I did over the weekend. It was actually entertaining, thank goodness. You get to know all the kids so you cheer for everyone which makes it more fun.
I loved volunteering to help score events. That was when time would really fly by. Below was the basketball sheet. That was intimidating. Volleyball was just point tracking but basketball...that was nuts and super fast paced and I could barely read the score sheet.
St John took home third over all which was the first time in a awhile that they had won an overall award. Our sister church in Beaumont, Redeemer, took home what I think is the most coveted award, the Christian Sportsmanship award.
My church kids and Pastor are in the yellow. We are missing about 6 or 7 yellow kids...you know kids always be leaving as soon as they can lol We will work on that.
I very much look forward to next year. I hope to be able to help assist the Youth Leaders at my church in the practice sessions that lead up to the event and watching these kids grow up too. I made a lot of new friends from my church and beyond so when April 20 comes for our big open kickball event, you betta believe I'ma play.
