The grass picking season has come to a halt as the weather changes and the grass gets blanketed in snow. The team is eager to stay in shape so during the winter, they resort to speed snowman building. As mundane as the sport may seem, it requires deft finger work and nimble hands, both of which make the grass picking team excellent members.
​The rules are fairly simple, you are given a narrow line of field (snowed over of course!) and 5 players try to build a snowman in shortest time possible. The roles are as follows: 1) Roll the bottom ball; 2) Roll the middle ball; 3) Roll the head ball; 4) stack them together; 5) decorate the snowman. The fastest time ever recorded was the winter of ’93. Captain Chris “Kringle” Jones and his team assembled their snowman in 10.35 seconds. Their opponents, led by Jack “Frost” Samuels assembled theirs in 40.95 seconds. This accomplishment put the Snowman building team into history. Or so it seemed.
​Lately, tales of that great winter have stopped, and Chris’ team forgotten, but the new coach Bruce Fields, a member of Chris’ team, said he will restore reverence to the sport. This may seem to be a futile effort as very few schools offer snowman building under their intermurals, but more than 20 schools have decided to adopt it and compete against one another. Luckily, this winter hasn’t given mercy to us as the snow keeps piling up. Going to school in the mornings, I have seen the team rolling mounds of snow into a snowman in record time. I witnessed their first meet of the season, which happened in Durham on January 24, 2015 against the Colchester Reindeer. Xavier won by a whopping ten seconds! Their next game is February 28, 2015 against the Rocky Hill Snowballs. If Xavier performs as well as they did in January, I feel that we will be hearing more about the team.
If you would like more information on the team and their upcoming events, please contact them at: [email protected]