Photo by Jenny Kirk As her team encourages her, Madison Mernaugh, center, tries to finish off a banana during a relay that was part of the 2017 Marshall Area Fellowship of Christian Athletes junior sports clinic on Friday.

MARSHALL — Shoving an entire banana into their mouth to win a relay contest probably isn’t a skill that any of them will put on their resume some day, but the effort sure got a lot of laughs and helped to build relationships between youngsters in attendance at the 7th annual Marshall Area Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) junior sports clinic on Friday at Marshall High School.

The sounds of laughter, praying and cheering on their teammates could be heard as more than 300 people took part in the day-long event, including 223 third- though eighth-grade students who had the opportunity to learn more about a sport of their choice in addition to incorporating their faith into their activities on Friday and in the future.

“I’ve been learning about serving, hitting, bumping and setting,” said Eryn Kraft, who just completed the sixth grade. “We played games with our volleyball group and for huddle time, we looked up verses and talked about that.”

Marshall student Brody Wixon decided to learn more about football at this year’s camp.

“It was good,” said Wixon, who just finished the fourth grade. “It was warm (outside). We’ve done mostly football and learned all the basics. We learned about both offense and defense.”

Along with volleyball and football, campers had the opportunity to participate in basketball, softball, baseball and hockey.

“We had hockey last year, but it was just in the parking lot,” said Julia Marshall, who along with Laura Hibma, served as co-director at the event. “This year, we used the new rink because it’s right by us, so that’s been awesome. We had about 25 hockey kids.”

Marshall said there’s a chance that they might offer soccer, wrestling and tennis next year, depending on how many sign up for those sports.

Becker coach Dwight Lundeen was this year’s keynote speaker. Also helping guide the young students were roughly 45 huddle leaders, 25 coaches and 20 volunteers.

“During the sports, the huddle leaders will share their favorite verse and tell them why,” Marshall said. “Then during Dog Patch Olympics, we pray after they play their game, which is awesome.”

While all of the student and adult leaders have pulled together in the past to make sure the event is fun and meaningful for the participants, they truly were asked to step up and fill big shoes this year in the absence of organizer Robin Knudson, who suffered a death in the family.

“With Robin being gone, everybody is pulling together and it’s just been amazing,” Marshall said. “We’ve seen God’s work everywhere. It’s been awesome.”

Marshall was quick to admit that it takes a lot of work and a good number of volunteers to organize and coordinate an event with so many participants and activities.

“It’s just a lot of work with the kids and getting the coaches confirmed,” she said. “We were surprised at how much she does. We have a board of like 12 people all doing her one job. Robin does a lot.”

At certain points in time, the huddle leaders spent time with the kids they’d been assigned. Lisi Skrien and Lexie Saugstad guided the day’s activities for 10 girls in their group — Rylee Jacobson, Rachel Hexem, Ayla Texley, Siri Christensen, Hannah Gordon, Brenna Foster, Virginia Munson, Brynn Stensrud, Kyah Pinckney and Keira Larson. One of the various activities they did together was to sign the back of each others’ FCA shirt.

During the Dog Patch Olympics, student participants had friendly competitions in a variety of activities, including a “Chuckit!” toss, football kick, soccer kick, banana relay, team bowling with an oversized bowling ball and other outdoor games.

Madison Mernaugh chomped down a banana to help put her relay team in the finals, as did Sean Griesse. In the six-team final, Griesse was quick to fit the entire banana in his mouth to propel his team to a second-place overall finish.

“It’s fun and it’s going well,” volunteer Linda Saugstad said. “We have a lot of great volunteers this year again and we have great weather. God is good.”