Cleaning Kids Sparkle In New Sport
Onalaska, Texas (DE) – With sport uniforms and equipment costs growing ever more expensive, a new sport is sprucing up southern Texas – cleaning. The Cleaning Leagues has been formed with teams of children being thrown together to clean houses. Parents have described it as the morphing of the chore era into the competitive era. Baseball bats and footballs have been replaced with brooms and cleaning spray. League officials also say that cleaning related injuries are lower compared to other sports.
"It has been a solution for many proud parents, like myself, to keep their children off the street and away from meth," said Jerry Tinure, proud parent.
The Cleaning League competition consists of two teams cleaning comparable dirty houses, such as scrubbing away shower mildew and sweeping out cobwebs. Teams as young as three years old are able to sign up for the 11 month season. The month of July is reserved for preseason training. Speed and compliance are top score makers with complaining automatically disqualify a team. Most coaches of disqualified teams use lashing to strike the love of cleaning into the children.
"If we don't provide tough coaching, who will?" asked Mary Wilcox, coach of the Cougars.
Parents hold practice sessions in their own homes on a daily basis to teach agility and endurance to the youngsters. Some parents will purposely spill and stain forcing their children to re-clean.
"Practice makes perfect. I want to give my kids the edge to win. I wasn't raised a loser by my parents and I'll be damn sure my kids aren't either." said Larry Smore, parent of two children in the Cleaning League.
NBC and ESPN are currently in discussion for broadcast rights for the playoffs and championship game set for next June. The Cleaning League hopes to expand to include special teams that clean streets and businesses.
