by Nicky Ouellet
When Coach Ray Appenheimer yells, "Scrambled eggs galloping!", the twenty or so kids at the Eastwood Elementary after school program leap up and gallop madly around the small gym. Weaving and dodging around each other, they move faster and faster in every direction, until Appenheimer shouts, "Iceberg" They all leap and land on two feet, arms flung wide to the sides as though they were surfing an imaginary crest. Smiling and look at each other, they quickly catch their breath. Appenheimer's next command is to walk like a crab, which the kids do while emitting shrieks of laughter. A little more than half a dozen Oberlin College students giggle with them as the whole group walks on hands and feet.
For the past two months, Ray Appenheimer, the cross country coach at the college, and a small troupe of his runners have walked to Eastwood Elementary to spend about an hour moving and playing with the young students. The focus is never on competition or perfection, but on having fun and working hard. As soon as the kids file into the gym, they are "scrambled eggs running" around the gym, crawling like bears, and climbing up the walls, literally - Appenheimer has the whole group walk their feet up the concrete walls while balancing on their hands. He hopes these kids will realize the enjoyment derived from an active lifestyle, a message that will hopefully remain with them in years to come.
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Appenheimer's heavy emphasis on learning and fun is underscored every week when he reminds the kids what they did the week before, and again at the end of the hour when he summarizes what they accomplished that day. Since October, the students have learned how to play tag in six different ways, how to count to ten in Russian, how to hula-hoop jump-rope, how to make a mushroom out of a parachute. While these skills may seem limited to a gym class, the underlying lessons of cooperation, fair game play, and friendship are what Appenheimer and his band impart to the youngsters. For this brief hour, gender and age do not matter. College students and elementary students alike slither side by side as snakes, boy and girls hold hands during games of blob tag. Each week reinforces the fun inherent in physical exertion.
Two weeks ago, the hour flew by in a raucous game of blob tag. Blob tag is like regular tag except that two kids are "it" and are obliged to hold hands, symbolizing to the rest of the group that they are "it" They race around tagging other kids, and as more are tagged they join the original blob of "it". Once the blob has four members, it breaks in half and continues the quest for total "itness". Appenheimer linked two kids together and the rest scattered across the gym, yelping with excitement. The blob raced after stragglers, pulling itself apart as first one half and then the other lunged in different directions. Gradually, the entire room was filled with blobs laughing and running in circles.
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The beauty of Appenheimer's strategy to get kids to enjoy exercise is that no one ever wins the games. When there were only a few remaining unaffiliated to the ";itness", he yelled, "Calling all kids!", signaling for everyone to sit in a circle wherever he happened to be standing. By the end of the third game, Eastwood and Oberlin students alike were panting. They listened silently as Appenheimer listed off what they had done and all the new things they had learned, and continued to be quiet as he told them to line up and exit the gym.
The line formed behind a tiny boy and issued silently from the room. But the back half didn't follow; they were intently watching the college students, their new friends. When the Obies realized this, one ran to them, coaxing them along. Together they all skipped, galloped, and ran out the room, already excited for the next Wednesday.
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