On Tuesday, February 22, I was part of a team of Cedar Falls teachers and local personalities, taking part in a fundraiser for North Cedar school. Their enrollment is significantly smaller than the other 5 elementary schools in town thus their parent organization is smaller as well. When it comes to raising money, they need to think outside the box.
So this year they put together a team of Incredibles and brought the Harlem Wizards to town! The idea was brilliant! 12 of my 28 fifth grade students, and even some of their parents came to the game. Mom and Grandma came to keep Kelli company with Charly in the crowd too! That's at least 15 tickets sold just by me being on the team! A team of 25 teachers, including KWWL anchor Ron Steele and weatherman Mark Schnackenberg, Saturday Night Live vet Gary Kroeger, and radio DJ Brett Manion were sure to bring in plenty of spectators. The packed gym was proof of the event's success.
Throughout the night the Wizrds' announcer gave members of our team nicknames ("She-wears-short-shorts", "He-wears-short-shorts", "Everybody loves Raymond", "John McCain", "Barbra Streisand", etc). As the first and second quarters played out I became nervous about stepping on the court for a few reasons. One, what nickname was I going to get ("The Missing Member of the Backstreet Boys")? And two, did they only tell us the third quarter would be competitive to get us to try really hard so we could be the entertainment while they embarrassed us (Kind of)?
After halftime our Cedar Falls team trailed by 12 points. The announcer told the score keeper to tie the score, shouting "The home town crowd didn't come out to see their team lose!" Once the score was tied, the announcer told the scorekeeper to spot us 20 points! Now I knew we were going to be embarrassed, but in a totally different way. The Wizards had one 8-minute quarter to get those points back!
We ended up losing by 30+ points! But the night was a lot of fun. Charly got a good nap in during the first half of the game but woke up just in time to see her daddy play. North Cedar raised a lot of money and my fifth-grade students were pleasantly surprised by what remaining basketball skills their teacher still had!
3 comments:
I like the nickname they gave you even better than Sanchez.
PS...cute dress, Charly Girl :)
What was the nickname? You never revealed…
I hid it in there with a question mark, sorry. "The Missing Member of the Backstreet Boys".
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