When the Coronavirus Crisis ends, life at BASH will undoubtedly be changed in many ways. To boost morale for next year, it’s rumored that BASH is considering some new sports. Possible new sports were investigated by Cub reporters and their findings are revealed below:

Competitive Dog-Walking– Jessie Ahart

After much planning and consideration, Boyertown High School is considering adopting a new sport that involves our furry friends: Competitive Dog-walking.

Dogs have remained our at-home companions over the years, but are now joining us on the track in hopes to help win gold. (Or maybe a few dog treats.) It’s a common activity to get some exercise with your pets and take them for a walk around your development, or go to further extremes, like taking them for hikes up mountains. While people tend to do this at their leisure, it is now being transformed into something a bit more competitive and intense. 

Instead of strolling through the park with your canine companion, this activity has now hit the tracks and upgraded to a real sport. And the biggest difference is the appearance. While some like to go on calming walks with their dogs, others enjoy running. However, competitive dog-walking, falls slightly in between. Owners and their pets have to maintain a steady pace that surpasses walking, but lies on the brink of running. This tends to be rather difficult, but absolutely astonishing if done right. It is still technically dog-WALKING, so the competitors must move as fast as they can, without picking up both feet from the ground at the same time. The second this is done, it is considering running, and they are automatically disqualified. It seems so easy yet is so complex. It’s about the precision of the paws hitting the ground while staying in sync with the owner. It may be difficult, but is a technical and gripping sport that Boyertown High School is ready to take on.

Once next year’s spring season is upon us, we will be officially introducing the sport, and begin training in preparation to compete against other schools. Similar to how it’s displayed on some television channels, there are dog and owner obstacle courses that the pair will complete. This will be how we will train here at the high school for our sport so the owner-doggy duo’s can connect on new, physical level. It will benefit our team and give our competitors more experience with quick and precise movements, that will help when it comes down to race time on the track. They may not be running, but the dogs and owners will learn to be quicker and gain more stability on their feet, which is a necessity when it comes down to speed-walking.

Marco-Polo– Avery Frey

Love to play the game Marco Polo in the summer? You may be able to join the Boyertown Area High School’s competitive Marco Polo team!

The Boyertown Area High School is now considering a new competitive sport of Marco Polo sometime in the year of 2020/2021. Students can join the team and they will hold tournaments at different locations in Pennsylvania. Some may be other high schools, high schools with indoor pools, different parks, mountainous terrains, open fields and many more. There will be one referee to monitor and reinforce the rules.

There will also be special tournaments held during the school week. These tournaments will only happen a couple times a year and will not be monitored by a referee, so if you hear students that are on the team screaming, “Marco Polo!” during the day, that’s why! 

How the game works is the person that is “it” will close their eyes. They will then yell, “Marco!” and the opposing team has to yell, “Polo!” The team will choose one person each tournament to be “it,” and they will have to go against the opposing team. The opposing team will then do the same thing and the person who says Marco the least wins! This will be played on land and in water. The only rule change between the two is that the opposing team’s players cannot get out of the water, if the person that is “it” thinks the opposing team’s player got out of the water, they can say “fish out of water!” and that is an automatic win. If the opponent actually did not get out of the water they will be deducted a point to their final score each time it happens.

The team will practice every day during the season just like every other Boyertown sports team, and the season goes on through the winter which means December through March. Practices will consist of strengthening hearing, working on not running into objects, and other hand eye coordination techniques. They will also practice getting out of water very smoothly and softly for when they play in water so they do not get called for fish out of water. There are no specific positions for this game, no special uniform, and no more than 10 people on a team. 

The Boyertown Athletic Office will announce tryouts as soon as they get approval, finalize the dates, and find a coach. Come out and join this competitive team, it screams fun! 

Tag!– Rose Soda

BASH’s new up and coming competitive tag team wants YOU to be a part of the fun next school year. 

Whether you call it tag, touch, tig or tick, the childhood game is an activity we’ve most likely all taken part in at one point or another. As we grow older, those once weekly played games, become more and more distant in our memories.

Lucky for Boyertown students, the district has decided to add the game as a part of our list of our competitive sports. There will be separate teams of both boys and girls. Both teams are anticipated to be coached by our very own, Mr. Leib, physical education teacher. Leib is skilled in a variety of different sports such as badminton, disc golf, and pickleball, all of which is included in the curriculum he teaches to students. Apparently the teacher also has an interest in competitive tag as a sport, “Yeah I saw it on TV one time and thought it looked cool, and I’ve been wanting to learn more about it to give it a try myself,” reveals Leib.

Because of this, he saw BASH’s new addition of the sport as a great opportunity to do so. Also interested in the future activity is BASH junior, Reilly Welch. When informed about the news of the new sport, Welch was surprised because the sport is lesser known, but also showed interest in joining. When asked for her thoughts on the matter, the junior replied with, “That’s kind of random but it does sound pretty fun.”

Welch plans on getting more information and trying out for the activity during her senior year at BASH. Fortunately, for intrigued students like her, we did some research so interested boys/girls can have a better idea of what they’d be getting into.

     Basics Rules for Competitive Tag: 

• It is a team format that is played by two teams and each team has a maximum of five athletes. 
• Each match consists of a predetermined number of chases (usually 10-16 chases).
• Each chase is twenty seconds long and has one athlete from each team – one is the Chaser and one is the Evader.
• The winning athlete in each chase stays on as the evader and the losing athlete comes off and is replaced by a teammate who becomes the Chaser in the next Chase.
• A team is awarded one point when their athlete successfully evades their opponent for the entire duration of the chase (i.e. 20 seconds). 
• The team with the most points after the predetermined number of chases wins the match.
• Tags must be made with the hand (i.e. NOT your foot).
• If an athlete steps out of bounds, they lose that chase.   

The Cub encourages students to do some research of their own to get more information and decide if competitive tag is a school sport they’d be interested in participating in the next school year. BASH school district is very excited to introduce this new activity with the hopes to get kids involved, and excited to be a part of it.

Cow Racing– Kali Vontor

Moove on over football, Cow racing has come to Boyertown.

Every year Boyertown Area school district looks through all suggestions of sports and decides whether they can host it or not. This year, 2020, Mr. Maoury chose cow racing as the new sport that Boyertown will fund. Many students who have never found a sport that suits them here at Boyertown, will now have an opportunity to participate in something that they truly want to.  

Boyertown is located in an area of Pennsylvania with lots of farms, which means many of the students grew up on or around a farm. For lots of students, this sport will feel like home and make them enjoy school even more. Like for junior, Gary Wade who said, “In my opinion, cow racing would be a great sport to add to Boyertown. It gives the students who don’t like the regular sports like football, wrestling, basketball, etc. to get outside and participate in an after school activity.” 

Although students who grew up around this scenery may like it, the students who didn’t may not feel this is a good idea. Abi Jackson, an 11th grader at BASH speaks out on how she feels about this update in sports. “I don’t believe enough people will be interested enough to participate. Although it’s a fun opportunity, they should survey on what the community is most interested in that way they can put money into the interest of the people.” 

She also went on to explain how she does not participate in sports normally and although this is a new, exciting sport for BASH, she will still not be participating. Tryouts for the races are slated to begin on September 8th, 2020.

Lots of students are also wondering how Boyertown can afford this new sport. Avery Frey, a 10th grader at BASH voices her question by asking, “How are we going to be able to afford such a big bill after building the new stadium?”

 According to sources familiar with the athletic department, Boyertown will be cutting all business class funding to encourage students to become farmers and farm off the land. All students will also be bringing in their own cows being that they are $2,000 – $5,000 per cow. If a student cannot afford the cow, Boyertown will have 5 cows to rent out to students during cow racing season. The school will be setting up cow stables by the side of the school.  BASH will provide school uniforms, as this is now a seasonal sport. The school will also be providing all the riding equipment including helmets, knee pads, a saddle, etc. Finally, all the students who make the team will be staying after school starting in September, 2020 to help execute a proper track for the upcoming herd around the baseball fields. 

BASH has gotten several letters from Oley school district stating how they are very excited to be joining in on this sport with us. This is a new start for Boyertown with new rivals and new allies. Especially for the potential new sports coach, Mr. Yenser. Mr. Yenser has never coached a sport at Boyertown, but rumors have it that Mr. Yenser jumped on this sport and immediately asked to host this sport for all the students at BASH. 

Overall Boyertown is very excited to introduce this new, dairy exciting sport to the students. Don’t be a cow and mooove on down to the athletics office first thing next year to grab a sign-up sheet.

Editor’s Note: We believe we have intelligent and critical readers of the Cub, so we’re sure you aren’t FOOLED by our FAKE NEWS. Please have a laugh on us during this time of uncertainty and, to be clear, absolutely nothing on this page is true.