Sports Sashes (a band of cloth worn across your shoulders to identify the team)

High school, 9. School year (16 students). Gradually, the students are entering the gym. The teacher hands out a sports sash to everyone who enters the hall. Some students are already playing basketball. When asked by the teacher whether there are still students in the locker room, the student answers: «Yes, Pascal and Dominik.» Then the teacher gathers those present in the middle of the hall. He explains the program and divides the class into 4 groups, two per gym hall half for the upcoming game: «Yellow and blue in this field, white and red in the other”. In the meantime, two other students enter the hall (Josef and Martin), they also get a sash each..

The warm-up game is noisy, but intense. In one half of the hall students play 3:3, on the other 4:5. When the teacher whistles to end the game, the results are roughly balanced. He explains that groups yellow and red should play basketball independently, while the others practice with him at the mini trampoline. 10 students gather around him while 6 students start playing basketball.

After 12 minutes, the teacher swops the groups. The basketball players go to the mini trampoline and vice versa. The 10 students who are now to play the basketball game have trouble starting the game on their own. After 3 minutes, the teacher intervenes and wants to know what the problem is. . When there is no answer, he appoints an injured student who sits at the edge of the hall as the game master. He has the task to organize the game and possibly whistle as a referee.

The teacher turns back to the trampoline jumpers. A game is slowly developing among the basketball players (blue - white). At the end of the lesson, the teacher has the equipment put away and and breaks up the basketball game. When he asked about the score of the game, very different answers are given. Students: «We just had to divide differently, so we played 6 against 4.»
Another students: «No, it was 7 against 3.»
Teacher: «Why didn't you play 5 against 5?»
Students: «With 5 against 5, the teams would not have been balanced.»

«With 5 against 5, the teams would not have been balanced.»