Hula Hoop Coach

Does such a thing exist you ask?

Yes, my friends.  It does.


As I mentioned a while back, I am currently working with AmeriCorps.  It's a long day at Catlettsburg Elementary, what, with tutoring math during the day coupled with a massive amount of planning, then running around like a mad man for the after-school program once the bell rings.  It's certainly been an experience.  I've learned a lot, gone insane a couple of times and overall really enjoyed myself.  One of the biggest endeavors thus far has been... hula-hooping.  Back in August my boss asked me if I could hula-hoop.  Thinking to myself: 'well yes, I can keep a hula hoop going'-- I answered with a semi-confident "Yeah, I'm not too bad."  It all happened so fast.  My boss asked me if I'd form a team of kids to hula-hoop and then introduced me to the program called 'Hoopersize.'   She showed me this video:



The woman in that video you see there, Miss Kellee as she is called, has apparently made millions with her DVD of hula-hoop tricks.  After watching the entirety of the DVD my confidence of hula-hooping didn't hold up so well.  My boss looked at me with a large, excited smile in expectation for my now promised hooper team.  I couldn't refuse.

I thought if I took a little time with it, I could get it and it'd be no big deal.  Let me tell ya.  This stuff is hard, yo.  I took this DVD home with a borrowed shiny pink hula hoop and I honestly did my best to follow along.  To no avail.  Apparently, hula-hooping for ten minutes is the equivalent to running a mile.  At first I scoffed at that.  I no longer scoff.  This woman, and all the kids she has with her, will jump while hula-hooping (an alley-oop), kneel while hooping (the munchkin), jump and spin(180 and 360) while hooping,  lay down on the ground while spinning hula hoop on the arm (the mummy) etc etc etc

ANYWHO... even though I couldn't do any of the tricks I ventured forth to form a hooper team with the after-school kids.  Luckily for me, these students were able to follow the DVD a lot better than I could, and a few of them already knew tricks from the year before.  These kids are awesome.  I was able to come up with a routine to music and we've now performed twice.  Once at a mall event, and once for a district wide assembly for families.  Ian was out of town for the first performance, but my mother-in-law sweetly came along to watch.  She thought it was cute but also laughed saying "I've never seen you act so peppy before!"  I do kind of... speak into a microphone and... prod them along in the routine that is semi-narrated by me.  I've surprised myself at how into it I get.  I jump around.... say things like "when I say hooper you say size.... HOOPER SIZE HOOPER SIZE."  It's certainly been an adventure.  And it's sucked up all my time believe it or not.  And besides shaking my head and thinking... never in a bajillion years would I have thought that I'd be a hula-hoop coach... it's been a blast.   I even had my one (and only) first grader point at me in the hall and nudge his pals saying "That's my hooper coach!"

I am so awesome.

And yeah... a lot of the kids will drop their hula hoops during the performance.  Or they'll bump into each other and cause a domino effect of dropped hoops.  And more than half of my kids on the team can't actually hula hoop but can keep it going on their arm while sporting a rockstar stance.  But hey, it's hula-hooping.  And my number one rule as a coach is to have fun.  Which they all scream in response when I ask them what my number one rule is.  Whoda thunk.

So Ian did finally come home from filming a trial in Atlanta, GA and was able to come to our second big performance.  Haha. So he snagged a couple of pictures for me.

And guess what.  We got a standing ovation.  

Which I understand was after 5 separate choirs performing that each lasted twenty minutes long.... 

And ours not only had movement and color, but only lasted two minutes

But hey-- I'll take it.