Il Va Y Avoir Du Sport!

Back in the States, our family used to enjoy track meets. Some of us ran, some watched, some helped. So when the coaches at Stade Genève (the athletics club that Luc and Johanna belong to) asked for volunteers to help with the Swiss Junior Athletics Championships, I encouraged the family to get involved. I am, for those who have not yet divined my deeper motives, on a continual campaign to make Geneva our home. I felt like participating in the meet might help with that effort. The family (some more reluctantly than others) agreed -- or at least agreed to humor me.

I tried to be completely transparent about our French abilities. I told Vanessa, who sent out the initial “help wanted,” that if she had a job for people who didn’t speak French, we were happy to oblige. Nonetheless, Eric was somewhat worried when he was assigned the job of “host.” Further, I questioned my success at communicating when I received an email addressed to “Fils,” which I later figured out was intended for Drew, (“fils” is “son” in French). Somehow, in my broken French, I had communicated, not only that I had a son, but that I had actually named him Fils (which the gentleman reading the note must have found odd). Nonetheless, I set myself down to translate the email describing our duties. I thought I had a fairly good handle on the job, but decided that I would send the whole note through Google Translate, so that I could make sure I understood without bothering Vanessa. The results were not encouraging. Here, for your reading pleasure, is what I got:

Your task will be to manage the rally to accompany athletes locations and transmit that leaves law.

Clocks in the stadium should be given to the time, and if this should not be the case down the clocks will be hidden. You will need your watches time clock stage ... If at the end of the call athletes are not present and the leaves are already parties with athletes when .. it will be too late for latecomers.

For hosts and hostesses: Your task will be to accompany the series or groups of disciplines on their sites. Once there you will let the commissioners to whom you have given the competition leaves (leaf starter switch). It will also put the leaves in the anemometer.

On the plan attached you will find the number 3.

I give you an appointment:

- Saturday 11 am at the stage of Bout-du-Monde to take your t-shirts and your good to install and corridors if we took behind the plant on Friday. The first athletes to present to you 12.

I ask the young shuttles silence and a sober, no more mobile on the stage, or headphones.

I think I have toured the situation and thank you again for your commitment.

After that tour of the situation, I joined Eric in his concern. What if we failed to get the leaves in the correct anemometer, and then it was too late? What should we do with the number 3 when we found it? And what if one of the young shuttles (neither silent or sober) set off the leaf starter switch and the clocks all came out of hiding? I devoted many nights to prayer, fingernail-biting, and questioning why this had seemed like such a good idea.

The  day of the championships was sunny, clear, and warm -- really too warm for the athletes, but lovely for volunteers, even nervous ones. It turned out that the people in charge of the hosts and hostesses spoke excellent English, and that our job (which was to take athletes to the starting line), required only knowing where each event started and being able to motion for a group of teens to follow. Best of all, as this was a championship for all of Switzerland, most of the athletes didn’t speak any more French than we did. It was even kind of fun to watch the French-speaking Geneva volunteers try to resurrect their  schooldays German to communicate with the kids participating. I could see them counting in their heads trying to find the right German number, “ein, zwei, drei . . . vier -- Bahn vier!”   just like I do in French. And half the time, they used the English, “Follow me!” assuming that it would make more sense to the athletes than the French, “On y va!”

Drew had a job shuttling heat sheets (turns out, that’s what the “leaves” were) from the office, and Johanna and Luke carried baskets for the athletes’ gear. In a spirit of honesty, I do have to say that being a track-meet volunteer will not rank among my favorite Geneva memories -- it was actually kind of boring to watch people we didn’t know compete. Nonetheless, it is a memory. And we all got cool t-shirts with the intimidating Stade Genève red, yellow, and black logo. Not every Ohioan can say that.