Donkeys win in donkey basketball game

By Harold Reutter

Northwest's FFA chapter and the donkeys were the winners in Thursday's donkey basketball games.  Proceeds from the games will benefit the FFA chapter, helping defray expenses for attending next week's three-day FFA State Convention in Lincoln, according to Jessica Brondel, Northwest High School agriculture teacher and Northwest FFA adviser.  Brondel said she will be taking 20 students, with three Northwest FFA teams qualifying to go to the convention.  She said she was pleased with the size of the crowd who attended the games, which pitted FFA students against Northwest High School teachers, members of the Grand Island Fire Department against members of the Grand Island Police Department and finally, FFA students against the Grand Island Fire Department team."It's been about 15 years since we've had a donkey basketball game," Brondel said.

 

Scores were almost immaterial, though. The games were played mostly for laughs, with the crowd cheering loudly anytime someone scored one of the infrequent baskets.  Although the FFA students won the game against the Northwest teachers with a basket scored in the game's final 10 seconds, Dairyland Donkey master of ceremonies C.J. Cordell announced that Northwest math teacher Lindsey Harders was high scorer for the game.  Harders, though, noted she had never played a donkey basketball game before Thursday night's contest. She did volunteer that she had played donkey polo, an outdoors contest played with each player on back of a donkey, wielding a flexible pipe as a mallet, chasing after a bouncing ball and trying to send it through a soccer goal.  Asked to describe her ability at that sport, Harders replied, "Terrible."  Harders said she did play high school basketball, but she credited her ability to score at least a few baskets to being teamed with a relatively tame donkey.  That was an astute observation.

 

Indeed, there appeared to be one educated donkey in the initial game that understood Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion: Any object that is at rest will remain in rest and any object that is in motion will remain in motion, unless an external force is applied to it.  In the donkey's case, the beast seemed to understand that any rider on its back would remain in forward motion and that all it had to do to dislodge that rider was to rapidly decelerate while simultaneously dipping its head and neck down. That was usually enough to send the rider flying over the donkey's head and onto the gym floor.
Because of the frequent spills, all the players had to wear Little League-style baseball helmets, complete with a strap and twin ear flaps. The wisdom of that precaution was evident when one Grand Island Fire Department member took a hard tumble that rattled his head, neck and shoulders. It was the only serious moment of the evening. Fortunately, the firefighter was uninjured.  Cordell had advised the crowd that his particular donkey was "special."

 

That donkey seemed to understand the "inertia" part of Newton's First Law of Motion particularly well. It would simply brace its legs and refuse to move anytime anyone tried to lead it by the halter.  That was equally true for Grand Island police officer Jarret Daugherty, police officer Ben Arrants and Grand Island firefighter Lonnie Mitteis, who were all given their chance with the special animal.  If anybody actually tried to mount the "special" donkey, it would fiercely buck. Since the donkey also refused to be led by its halter, the animal pretty much spent the entire game at one end of the basketball court.  Although the "special" donkey usually insisted on standing in one place, it occasionally would interrupt its inertia with a spontaneous fit of bucking, even if nobody was trying to ride it. One bucking episode resulted in the donkey making a brief escape into a school hallway.

 

Because the rules of a game required that any player making a pass or shooting a basket be mounted on a donkey, players paired with the "special" animal soon learned their best bet was to lean gently across the donkey's back and lift their feet about 2 inches off the floor so they could attempt to make a quick pass to a fellow player.  While the recalcitrant donkey was entertaining in its own right, people needed to take care that their attention not stay in one place. Otherwise, they might miss a sight like Grand Island police officer Butch Hurst tucking the basketball underneath his orange T-shirt so he could use both hands to hold the reins of his trotting donkey.

 

Even when the donkeys weren't trying to be obstinate, their choppy gait whenever they trotted sometimes sent players tumbling to the floor, especially if the rider was trying to catch a pass from a teammate or trying to scoop up a loose basketball as it bounced along the floor.  There were enough spills, that there could be a few players on Friday morning who might wish that they had worn hip pads, knee pads, elbow pads and other cushioned gear in addition to helmets to help protect them during the donkey games.