Opening Day is finally here this weekend.  What a great way to start off the new season and build from where we left off last year.  This season the Bay Cruisers Prep team will be defending the National Championship.  The Varsity team had a rebuilding season last year and now they are back on track.  

Over the summer the kids worked their butts off with an aggressive cross-training program to get ready for the season.  I started thinking about new challenges for the kids.  I wanted something that would keep them motivated through the summer, keep them involved with our already scheduled programs, and be challenging enough that it would actually take some work to accomplish.    I also wanted it to be something measurable so we could repeat the task in the future and see if we are able to improve.

I designed the “Energy Challenge” as an event that challenged the kids to be as active as possible in BORP activities including adapted cycling, wheelchair basketball, roadwork, and sled hockey.  I used equipment that we were able to get through a grant from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and tracked the distance and calories the kids were burning through the summer.  We tracked the activities they did and kept track of the calories they were burning through the summer.  The results were amazing!  We had 40 kids take part in the challenge and after the three-month tracking period was completed, we totaled the numbers and here is what we found:

• The kids rode adapted bikes a total of 1185 miles
• pushed their wheelchairs 422 miles on the basketball court
• pushed an additional 40 miles on the streets
• played over 30 hours of Sled Hockey. 

 All totaled the kids in the BORP Youth Sports Program burned approximately 239900 calories. 

That’s not all..  We finished off the summer with our 2nd annual Truck Pull.  This is designed to let the kids see how much power they really do have and also of an exercise on teamwork.  The kids team up and pull a truck across a basketball court.  You can see the Truck Pull here   This has been one of my favorite events because the kids that do it get to go to school and when people ask them what they did last week they can say, “I pulled a truck.  What did you do”?  That is pretty awesome.

So, as you can see, the kids are ready, we are ready, and like I said earlier, Opening Day is this weekend.  Come on out and be part of the best program on earth.