Kids Learn Lacrosse with 'Toy Story' and 'Ratatouille'

Five preschool-aged children are getting lessons in the basics of lacrosse, basketball, soccer and T-ball this week as part of Chatham Recreation's Multi-Sports Camp.

The camp, which is held at Chatham Middle School from 2 to 3 p.m. each day this week, is designed for boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 5. In this week's session, however, all the campers are boys under 5 years of age.

Lauren Wheeler and Adam Henbrey are the camp's counselors and coaches this week. Both come from England and plan to travel through America this summer to coach at various sports camps.

“I do a lot of sports at University back home and the people in charge just came down to one of our sessions one day asking if they could leave some fliers out basically to do this [camp]” said Henbrey.  “I was just quite keen to do it.”

Wheeler, too, said she has "been doing sports all my life back at home." She said that coaching is a "hobby" for her, and that being able to do it in the US "is just a fantastic opportunity."

Wheeler and Henbrey organized creative games to teach the children about lacrosse, and to keep it entertaining for the young ones. As a warm-up, the kids had to run about as different animals, and then they had to freeze into a statue at a sign from the coaches.

In a variation on an egg and spoon race, the children had to run across the field holding a lacrosse ball in the nets on their sticks.

Wheeler and Henbrey also taught the children games with relations to movies they would recognize, such as "Toy Story" and Ratatouille." In "Toy Story" the game, the children had to steal toys, or lacrosse balls, by picking up the balls from the ground with their sticks. If, however, they woke up the sleeping Henbrey, though, they had to freeze.

In "Ratatouille," the kids were able to practice their aim and abilities with their lacrosse sticks by throwing lacrosse balls, or "ingredients," into a hula hoop, or "pot." This exercise gave them another opportunity to learn how to handle their sticks.

The kids showed off their new skills for their parents at the end of the day by tossing balls into different hula hoops, each of which represented a different musical instrument. Once all the balls were inside the hula hoops, the kids picked which instrument they wanted to be and imitated the sound those instruments make.

The idea, the coaches said, was that each instrument had to be filled with sound, i.e. lacrosse balls, before they could be "played."

With their newfound knowledge in lacrosse, the kids will return each day this week to learn a new sport. Camps such as this, Wheeler said, "allows them to develop their sports skills at a really young age."