I have been playing a lot of catch with my 10-year-old son Jeremy. We have been playing baseball, football, and soccer (he sometimes plays goalie). When I saw the record for the furthest distance to throw and catch a water balloon, I immediately thought of him and asked him if he wanted to give it a try. Of course, he is up for anything and he said absolutely yes. We got some water balloons, filled them up, and when I tried to throw them, they immediately shredded. The record is over 127 feet so I was not even sure if I could get them that far. When I tried throwing them, the inertia left the water where it was and the latex from the water balloon moved forward so fast it just shredded.
So we got some other water balloons that were a bit thicker and tried again. When I used a traditional throwing motion like a baseball, again the water stayed where it was and the balloon moved forward, and since more water went one direction around my hand than the other, the balloon just kind of flared in the air and barely went anywhere. I was not even getting close to a third of the record distance, and so I thought initially hey maybe I need to give up. But then I thought hey, I do not give up that easily. If the record exists somebody figured this out, how am I going to do it? What I ended up doing was trying a catapult motion where I swing my arm around with a straight arm in a circle and then release it when it is at the apex, use the centripetal force to accelerate the balloon, and then when its velocity is in the direction I want, let go and let it fly up and over an arc.
I tried a few of those and I realized I was getting close to the record distance when I walked off the distance. So then Jeremy lined up, I started throwing, and he almost caught a few before the water balloons were breaking. A few smacked him and he got a red welt on his shoulder. I said hey, do you want to quit? And he is like no, I do not want to quit, I want to keep going. So I kept throwing the balloons, got better at it, more accurate, and got them to where they needed to be. Finally, he caught one in practice so we knew we could break the record.
Then we lined it up with record day out at the park. He was at a sports and arts camp he was attending and at the end of camp I set up all the cameras and the kids gathered around, and I started chucking those balloons. The first throw was awful and then we had several that were close, but a little too far away from him or slipped through his hands. Finally, we had the perfect throw, the perfect arc right at him. He was able to gather it and get his hands and legs underneath it so that when it stretched it did not touch the ground. We marked it off and the new record is 43 meters. It just goes to show that if you set your mind to a goal, believe yourself, and pursue a passion, you can accomplish virtually anything even if you are a 10-year-old. Congratulations, Jeremy.