Jay High School football returns this fall looking for a third-in-a-row winning season under Head Coach Kent Smith. Last Thursday, the staff tried something new to bring the 2015 upperclassmen together, a day at Adventures Unlimited (AU) doing team building exercises on the high and ground ropes course followed by tubing down the river.
The 10 seniors and one junior began their day at 7:30 in the morning deep in the woods at the foot of a ladder. Bill Hay and Zach Harris with the AU Ropes Challenge Course strapped the team into climbing gear, and divided the players into climbers and the belay team. The climber would go up a ladder, walk across a rope using hanging ropes as handholds on a cable above him, then walk from the end of the rope to the middle again, all while his team down below held his rope and then eased him to the ground from 30 feet up.
The belay team consisted of five students in a row all holding the climber’s rope either giving slack or increasing tension on the rope as needed. They all had to move together with the first guy feeding the rope and acting as a counterweight if the climber falls. The student at the end handled the slack at the end of the rope. The three in the middle kept tension in the rope and moved together to pull the rope in a wave motion as the climber ascended the ladder.
Hay encouraged the teammates to call out safety checks together after they performed them and to explain their jobs when they would switch positions. The climber and belay team also needed to keep in constant contact to know when to take up or allow more slack. Hay at one point said to the belay team of the climber, “Coach him up there…Tell him where he can go.”
None of the players said they were familiar with this kind of climbing. They were not open at first on communication but by the third climber, the belay team members explained tasks to each other without prompting and worked with the climber in the same way. The ropes course lasted until noon with three different activities up high and three others on the ground.
Coach Richard Vester came up with the idea from similar work he was a part of in Northwest Georgia. Vester said the trip for the seniors on the surface acted as a reward for accomplishments in the previous seasons while other benefits included overcoming fears and learning problem solving, “all kinds of intangible stuff,” he said.
The third player to go up on the rope, Trevor Rawls, a senior, said, “I was a little scared. I don’t do well with heights.” Going up the ladder and across the rope, he didn’t show it. He and the belay team on the ground communicated and he made it up, across, and was lowered down without a tremble. The future outside linebacker said it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Vester said he overcame his fear because he trusted his teammates.
Smith said he believed the team learned some things it can apply to the coming season. The first, he said, was teamwork. “Some of the things on the ground required them to think together and agree and accomplish a goal.” He said some of the players were uncomfortable with the heights, “but with teammates’ encouragement, they went up and got it done. They were able to overcome some fears.” Smith said the trip was about senior leadership, “and I think they got some.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Jay players learn the ropes