Jayhawk Elementary students rewarded for fundraising effort

Jayhawk Elementary student Emma Metcalf pours a cup of slime over the head of John Williamson. Williamson and teacher Ryan Metcalf were slimed by students as reward for raising $11,500 for the Kids Heart Challenge. (Photos by Roger Sims/Linn County Journal)

Ryan Metcalf and John Williamson looked at each other and laughed nervously as they slipped their heads through holes in plastic bags. Behind them Melissa Rock was stirring a 5-gallon bucket partially full of a watery green goo.

Metcalf, a physical education teacher at Jayhawk Elementary School, and Williamson, a custodian at the school, were ready to make good on a promise with students there. Rock, a representative of the American Heart Association, made the final stirs to the bucket of “slime” as the men took their seats in chairs on the gym floor, which had been covered with a plastic tarp.

Students, teachers and staff members had already filed into the gym, filling the bleachers. They were ready for the show.

Nearly 30 students earned the right to slime Ryan Metcalf, in back center, and John Williamson, in orange t-shirt, as part of the challenge.

The promise was this: Students who helped raise money for the Kids Heart Challenge would be able to pour one cup of slime over the heads of the two men for every $100 they raised.

The students at the school raised a total of $11,500 for the Challenge, so the students in the bleachers were expecting a good show.

The students who earned the right to pour the slime didn’t disappoint. Metcalf was the first to get slimed. The crowd in the bleachers reacted with a combination of laughter, squeals of joy, clapping, and shouts.

Students spared Williamson in the beginning, singling out Metcalf for cups of goo over his head, down his back, and even in his lap. But eventually student Emma Metcalf, Ryan Metcalf’s daughter, walked up behind Williamson and anointed him with the first cup of slime.

Wagers Alexander empties his cup of slime on John Williamson.

Soon both men were drenched in the green stuff, and the crowd of students seemed to enjoy successive cups of slime as much as the first.

The student who raised the most money, Bentley Cummings, had gone home sick earlier in the day. But not wanting to spare the men his fundraising reward, he bequeathed his sliming cups to the rest of the kids in his kindergarten class as he left.

After the sliming was complete, the students lined up on the gym floor for a group photo, but the sliming was not done. Rock poured the remaining slime in the bucket over Ryan Metcalf’s head.

Last year, the Jayhawk students raised $6,000 for the Challenge. Metcalf said the students this year worked hard at raising the money.

According to the American Heart Association, the money raised by the national Challenge goes to help children who have special heart needs, including surgery. The program also teaches students the importance of keeping their hearts healthy.