A C Y O A

Twice a year the ACYOA Jrs. always are excited for Sports Weekend. This past Memorial Day Weekend (May 25 - 28, 2007) the Juniors from different parishes in the northeast, even Louisiana, congregated at St. James in Watertown, Massachusetts Friday evening. This was beginning of our long weekend.

After seeing all our friends, we left the church with our host families to spend the rest of the night at their houses. The next morning we were woken up bright and early, given breakfast, and driven to the gym to play sports! Providence was represented by a co-ed volleyball team and a girls basketball team.

First we played volleyball, and proudly won our first match! We lost the last two matches and the win went to Holy Trinity. Next it was time for girls basketball. Although we had practiced weeks in advance, we were all a bit nervous! We played very tough and broke our record of 7 points- we scored 8! The score was 31-8, and yes we lost, but we tried our best!

Saturday night we had our first dance. The next morning we woke up to go to church, stayed at the gym to watch the championships, and then returned to our host family's house to prepare for the banquet/dance. All of us had a great time at the dance with out friends even though we sadly didn't win any awards. There was an Armenian band that played along with a DJ! The dance ended around 1 a.m. and we all returned to our host families for the last time.

The next morning we arrived at the church to have a breakfast and say goodbye to everyone! It was extremely sad to leave all our friends but this weekend just made our Armenian bond even stronger! We will all see each other again this summer at St. Vartan Camp! Overall, Sports Weekend was a great experience for everyone and hopefully next may we'll have even more kids who want to join us!