As many people know by now, Rachel Carson does have a lot of school sports clubs.Some people think that these clubs are not enough and want a school team. We interviewed the teachers and coaches of some specific clubs and learned some very interesting things.

The first person we interviewed was Ms. Lohman, who runs both the boys and girls basketball clubs. She said that the challenges of running her club(s) are that the amount of people that show up vary from meeting to meeting, meaning that she can’t get the same people to come every week. Ms. Lohman also said that the best part of the club is being able to watch these kids play basketball and grow up from being 7th graders to being 8th graders. The hardest part of running this club for the boys is controlling the excitement level on the court. The hardest part for the girls is that they don’t get many girls to come. During this club, the students mainly scrimmage after being divided into teams by using the captain system. This club meets on Mondays for boys and Wednesdays for girls during A block and is very fun and you will be able to get some exercise while playing a fun game. While talking with Ms. Lohman, we got to experience what it is like in the basketball club.

Next, we spoke to Ms. Molnar, who is the leader of the flag football club. We asked her what are some challenges of running this club, she said, “Safety, skill levels, and keeping it fun, not competitive.” She also said that they put themselves into teams and then they play, when asked what does she do during club meetings. We also asked her how she divides people into teams, she said that she does pick them but that she lets the kids pick their teams also. When asked the question: how do you handle people with different skill sets, she said that they place themselves to balance their skill sets. The last thing we asked was if there is anything hard about running this club and our response was logistics and time management were the main sticking points. Her club meets on Wednesdays during A block and is having a team tournament during the second quarter. We encourage anyone who wants to participate to participate in this club. We think that Ms. Molnar likes running and watching the flag football club.

Finally, we got to sit down with Mrs. Carr, who supports the running club, and she had some very interesting things to share with us. We asked: “What are the challenges of running the club?”. She said,“If a lot of people show up for the club and then it rains, it is harder to do the club.” She also likes to sponsor this club because she gets to see the kids’ real selves when they run. We asked her if there is anything hard about sponsoring the running  club and she said that there really isn’t anything hard about running the club. She sometimes runs with the students in the club but that usually depends on if she got up early in the morning to run on her own but she usually just does drills to help the participants with running. She handles the different skill sets of the participants by grouping people together with other people who run at the same pace and always allowing some people to walk when they need to. Mrs.Carr always incorporates running games into every meeting. As we have seen with Mrs. Carr, it is sometimes good to take a fun-run.

After interviewing the leaders of three great clubs, we learned that Carson may not have an official sports team, but we still have many very interesting, very fun, groups of clubs. These clubs are just the tip of the iceberg at Rachel Carson Middle School. We have many more great options after-school as well to go along with many other great options that do not involve sports. Even though some of these clubs have a limited amount of people, we encourage you to participate in these clubs, and remember- all you have to do is try it once and you will be hooked forever.