Arden the Decathalete

Arden was selected to be one of the four kids from the 4th grade to represent her school at the district-wide decathlon!  

Wait, what?  

There is a district-wide decathlon?  Apparently there is, and each school sends a 4th grade team of two boys and two girls, a 5th grade team, and a 6th grade team. Arden made the 4th grade team based on her performance as they practiced the events during P.E. class.  The other girl was her friend, B, so she was excited.  Go team!

The events included:  (1) How many sit-ups can you do in a minute (Arden got maximum points...she does hundreds of V-snaps at gymnastics, so one minute of sit-ups is a walk in the park for Arden.):

There was also (2) how many push-ups in a minute (Arden got maximum again!).  There was (3) a timed shuttle run, (4) how many jump ropes in a minute, (5) an accuracy throw, (6) 100-meter dash and (7) a long jump (Arden looks like she is flying in this blurry picture):

Arden did pretty great at all of these!  There was also (8) a basketball dribbling course, which Arden was not so familiar with...let's just say she tried her best.

Then there was the event that was really stressing her out: (9) cup stacking.

Wait, what?

Cup stacking?  Yes, it is a thing.  A thing Arden had never tried until they were trying all of these events in P.E. class.  They had to make a pyramid of 3 cups, a pyramid of 6 cups, and other pyramid of 3 cups and then unstack them again as fast as they could.  Arden stacked cups about as fast as someone who had never stacked cups before would be expected to stack them.  Arden's P.E. teacher even let her bring some cups home to practice with the week before the big day.  Unfortunately, the practicing only seemed to stress her out more!  Arden was worried that hundreds of people would be watching her stack cups and she might knock them all over and (her worst fear), she would look stupid in front of everyone!  I explained that only moms and dads would be there, and that all the events would be going on at the same time so the only ones watching her would be me and the judge. This made her very happy. Actually, luckily for her, she was the last on her team to stack cups, and the boys on her team stood RIGHT in front of the stacking table, effectively blocking everyone's view (including my camera's).  Arden did okay from what I could see.  But wow, there were some expert cup stackers out there!  Some of those schools have been practicing!

Arden's best event was probably (10) sit and reach.  Here she is starting her reach.  How far past your feet can you go?   Probably not as far as Arden.

 At the end of the day, her team won 5th place in the district, which they were pretty excited about!  They even got medals, and were the only team from their school to place.

Congrats decathlon team!