After doing the ‘No Kid Hungry’ campaign I was encouraged to come up with another challenge for the soccer players within our Bainbridge Island FC club.   This time the concept was that we could ‘juggle around the world’.  Our friends at Google confirmed for me that to travel around the world would equal 24,901 miles.  The plan became that every juggle would equal one mile.  Just 24, 901 juggles then.

With the COVID-19 outbreak and the associated isolation we are at a point where kids who are off school needed something they can do in their own back yard.  The idea of this was to encourage kids to be active and also give it a purpose through soccer.  Our club and the BIFC board graciously agreed to sponsor 7 cents per mile/juggle.  This was all to be in aid of Bainbridge Youth Services who are a non-profit organization on Bainbridge that offers professional no-fee confidential counseling for adolescents in our community that helps them promote their social and emotional well-being.  Great cause, so it was just a matter of inspiring kids to get out there and juggle a soccer ball.

If you are a kid reading this, and you need help, need someone to talk to, and that friend, team-mate, parent, or coach is not the right answer, maybe Bainbridge Youth Services is.

With our juggling challenge, I thought day #1 was a decent effort, as we made our way to Cairo, over 6000 miles.  When I realized we had made it barely 25% of the way there I thought we had bitten off more than we could chew.

Juggling a soccer ball with different parts of your body isn’t easy, it requires persistence, hard work, resilience, and patience.  All the core values & good traits we want to instill in our youth. The players just kept on juggling a soccer ball, girls, boys, dads, moms, and coaches.  Some of the scores that kids began to achieve were just ridiculous.  Individual personal bests were being broken all over the place. Every juggle counts.  Every mile counts. Scores in the several hundred’s, and some over 1000, just impressive.

After day #2 we made it to Sydney, Australia, one of my favorite places in the whole world.  I’d have been happy to stay there :).

But as day #3 broke the rain had descended, and I thought with several 1000’s of miles still to go we might be in trouble.

The scores kept on coming, jugglers kept on juggling.  Left foot, right foot, chest, headers, and even a dinosaur juggling!  I learned new skills as I created video collages, and again created photos collages of numerous, upon numerous of different folks juggling a soccer ball.  There were so many videos I could have done a feature-length film, but I just couldn’t keep up with the editing :). I made sure I cropped at least a photo from all to ensure everyone made the list and every juggle made the total, that total continued to grow.

We needed 24,901 juggles to travel the world, we went so far we made our way to Portugal on going around AGAIN.  A total of 30, 569 juggles, and I’m guessing more will keep arriving late.  Here are the pictures and you can check out the videos as the Bainbridge Island FC Facebook page.