Sports knockout

In the fall, the field behind Henry Crown Field House fills with football players practicing tackles and running sprints under head football coach Dick Maloney. This past Friday Coach Maloney was on the field, but he wasn’t giving instructions to big guys with shoulder pads. Instead he was giving water bottles to kindergarteners at a cookout for the U of C’s Super Summer Sports Camp. University coaches like Maloney make up the staff, while varsity athletes serve as counselors.

On the football field, the kids thought over their first three weeks of camp. Asked their favorite sports, one boy nodded earnestly, his mouth too full of hamburger to speak, as a friend rattled off every game from floor hockey to dodgeball. “My favorite sport is baseball,” a kid with big eyes and a red cap interrupted. “I’m great at first base.”

Meanwhile, third- and fourth-graders practiced their strokes in the pool at Ratner Athletics Center, working to earn diving-board privileges. Afterward they formed a ragged line and wove toward the field house for basketball, chattering about World Cup Soccer. The campers begged counselor and track athlete Emily Sayer, ’07, to play Knockout. “I’m about on par with the third- and fourth-graders,” she joked.

More than 200 kids aged six to 16 will be in the pool, on the courts, or on the fields behind Ratner and Crown through July 28. Next week: archery.

Jenny Fisher, ’07

7th Graders on Bench good_thumb.jpg Boy with Bat good_thumb.jpg Little Kids Lunch good_thumb.jpg

Photos (left to right): Seventh-graders wait to bat; a boy tosses his bat to run the bases; kindergarteners enjoy a cookout.

July 7, 2006