Erin asked me about two weeks ago if I wanted to volunteer for the Special Olympics. Now, honestly, I didn’t really want to, but I said yes anyways. Two days ago was the day, and even before hand, I really wasn’t all the excited.
So we get up and head over to Thornwood High School at 9 AM on Saturday. And then we got there, and it was complete Chaos (yes, with a capital “C”). We didn’t know where we were going, or what we were doing or anything. In fact, Erin’s parents who had signed up were initially rejected when they came to the sign-in booth because they didn’t have their IDs. Both Erin and I thought this was quite strange, seeing as how we weren’t asked for our IDs.
However, everything was worked out by one of the ladies that Erin has been working with at her clinicals for the past 10 weeks. Apparently she’s been doing this for quite a few years and everyone knows who she is. We then watch the opening ceremonies and then head over to the softball throw, which we were helping with. There are basically 4 areas:
- Check-in—Calls out the heat numbers and people in the heats
- Escorts #1—Take the athletes from the Check-in area to queueing seats for the heats and put them in the correct order for their heat
- Escorts #2—Escorts the athletes from the seats to the actual throwing area and then from there to the awards area
- Recorder—Records the distances for each thrower, and then figures out the place standings for the heat
- Grunts—The people chasing after the thrown balls
Erin was a Recorder, because she’s responsible and stuff (and the person handing out jobs was one of her coworkers) and I was an Escort #1 with Erin’s Dad.
We all had a blast. Even with the crappy weather, it was crazy fun. We were all running all over the place and the athletes were great. I would definitely recommend volunteering at an event like this to anyone.