Zaharii and Ryan: The Gladiators of the Sports Group
Coach Alan Jr, on his return from San Antonio, decided to spice up the Sports Group rules for his assigned group. With Arin, Ryan, Elvin, Eli, Zakharii, and Dylan competing for the prize, Alan set the following rules: on Monday, the campers would try to collect as many points as possible. On Tuesday, Alan would steal points from the players. On the final two days, the campers would steal points from each other. With this system, the total number of points does not increase after round one, keeping the competition close up to the final day.
And so, the competition began! On Monday, Alan immediately gave ten points to Arin. He then challenged the other campers to tag Arin and steal away two of his points. He then repeated this exercise for the rest of the campers, except Zakharii. At the end of the session, Alan challenged all the campers to risk their points: if they could avoid getting tagged for 20 seconds, they would steal the points from their chasers. Zakharii won the challenge, thereby stealing all the points from his competitors. Eli, unfortunately, got tagged, meaning he lost all of his points! By the end of the first round, Zakharii was comfortably in first place, with an over 15 point lead!
On Tuesday, it was time for Alan to steal the campers’ points! First, he made the campers do clapping pushups and copy his athletic poses. Since nobody succeeded, Alan took away four points from each camper! He then attempted to score against and save a shot from each camper. Although most of the campers succeeded in saving the shots, they were not able to score, so Alan, once again, took two points away. Finally, Alan challenged each camper to tag a coach before he tags them. Once again, they all failed, meaning they lost two points each. At the end of the round, three campers - Eli, Arin, and Elvin, had zero points each. Dylan was not far off with three, Ryan had slightly more, but Zakharii kept his massive lead with close to 13 points!
On Wednesday, it was up to the players to steal points from each other, since Alan would not be handing away any more himself. In a series of one on one challenges, a parody of the Olympics, the last place player would choose an opponent to compete against. The winner would then steal two points from the loser. Eli and Ryan were the big winners of the day, taking points of Zakharii and the bottom three players. And although Zakharii’s points total shrunk, he still held a slight lead over second place Ryan.
Which leads us to the final day. To continue the theme of campers taking points from each other, Coach Alan handed each camper a cone. After placing the cones in close proximity, one camper held a dodgeball. If a camper were to hit a cone of another camper, he would steal their point. Eli, knowing he had to go all out to have a chance at winning, sacrificed all defense to try stealing the dodgeball. And although his effort was impressive, he left his cone exposed, time and time again, allowing Ryan to steal his points! With time almost up, the score was: Ryan - 10 points; Zakharii - 10 points. Nobody else was near, and, with several near misses from all players, the score stayed that way.
And so we decided to break the tie on Friday via circle of doom: whichever player survives longer out of three games wins the group. Because there are three matches each day, there is no possibility of a tie - allegedly. Due to some controversy in the second round, and each player winning one round outright, the tie could not be broken.
And so, there was only one final way to break the tie: a good old blitz match! If the game would end in a draw, the players would switch colors and go again. However, there was no need, since Zakharii remained calmest under the pressure, and dominated the match!
Despite the end, Coach Alan congratulates both players for putting up such a fight until and past the last day! May we see more such drama for the final week of camp!
Dodgeball
This week in Dodgeball, 5-year-old Eddy managed to score dodgeball points almost every day of camp, a remarkable feat! Everyone cheered for Eddy when he successfully managed to hit someone and take them out. For someone his age, this event is incredibly rare, and he should be applauded for his impressive feat. However, due to his small size he was not in the running for first. That honor goes to Kian and Rayan, twin brothers. Every day, they fought for first, with Kian taking the lead one day, then Rayan clawing back the point lead the next day. This back and forth continued throughout the whole week, but eventually, Rayan proved himself the superior twin in dodgeball, and took first place.
Bughouse Tiebreak Match
This week’s bughouse & blitz tournament was very thrilling to watch. Two very strong teams were heads up against each other. The first team was Simona and Daniel, and the other strong pair consisted of Anderson and Zacharii. After the fifth round, there was a tie for 1st place between the two teams. So there had to be a final game of bughouse and blitz. In the end, Anderson and Zacharii defeated the other team, but Simona and Daniel held up a good fight!
Adventures with Animals!
As we all know, the campers don’t just play chess all day. They exercise their minds and also their physical bodies when they are outside. There were a few occurrences this week where people were walking their dogs and allowed the campers to play with their dogs. The campers enjoyed every moment of it.
Alan’s Footballing Disaster
This week, Alan was invited to play football (or soccer, as you all call it) with the GM Camp. Although he expected to score a hattrick (three goals), not only did he score a single goal, but he made a defensive mistake which led to Thomas’s goal! Below is a visual of Alan’s physical state after the match:
And so he decided to redeem himself the following day. Once again, however, he was outsmarted by the brilliance of GM Alexander Stripunsky. As a result of his defensive style, Thomas’s sniper instincts, and the capitulation of Alan’s team, Alan lost 3-5, with three goals coming from Thomas, and Alan himself scoring two goals - with one going in his own net!
Teaneck Highlights
This week in Teaneck, it was all fun and games as the campers took part in a competition where they graciously accepted the award of “Best Person in the Universe.” This contest, created by Coach Slava, let the campers give a 45 second speech before music was played as their time was up. It was fun to hear each camper’s unique takes, with many reminiscent of popular Oscar acceptance speeches. In the afternoon, I had the privilege of watching the campers playing their tournament games and applying their skills learned in the morning lessons towards their games in the afternoon as one of the tournament directors. Overall, it was a great week filled with learning and fun!
This week we played our first game of soccer all year! The star of the show was definitely Yair. He scored twice as his team won 5-3. The star of the other team was Micheal Chang. He was unstoppable. Trary was very impressive as goalie, he even blocked a penalty shot. The coaches had some fun too playing with the campers too. I hope we get to play soccer again this week.
Thank you to everyone for reading the report. We all look forward to welcoming everyone for the final week!
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