The tension had been building in the JCI Barnsley camp for the past month and the gauntlet had been thrown down between Team President and Team Deputy to see just who would reign the winner of our first ever triathlon event. The event consisted of 18 holes of crazy golf, a game of laser tag and then bowling. May the best team win, which of course I was secretly, well okay not so secretly hoping would be Team President.

My team consisted of JCI Barnsley members Ben, Emma and Scott, my husband Phil and the youth of the side in the form Jodie's children, Casey and James. We were raring to go with big talk and enthusiasm and set off around the 18 holes trying to get around in the lowest number of shots individually. The player with the lowest overall score at the end was my husband, Phil followed by Scott so we were surely off to a flying start?! Triathlon organiser Ben has devised the scoring for the day so basically everyone would be allocated a score depending on where they finished out of all 13 players, 1st play = 13 points, last place= 1 point. So how on earth did we manage to lose the golf overall when we took 1st and 2nd place????? You're only as strong as your weakest team members!

Okay, nobody likes a sore loser, so heads held high we moved onto Laser Tag. Launching ourselves into an enclosed room, consisting of 2 floors, darkness and smoke we shot at everything and anything we could in an attempt to score as many points as possible. After 20 minutes we all emerged from the darkness sweaty and exhausted! The scores on the door meant that James, who had aptly called himself "Winner" on his laser tag name was overall top scorer and again this meant my team had taken individual top score position again, but again we were beaten by Team Deputy by 10 points! Okay, I'm starting to think something dodgy is going on with Ben's scoring strategy!

There was nothing for it, we MUST win the bowling by 4 points to be crowned 2012 champions. No pressure, but this was now game on! All out war, I could not be beaten! So we all regrouped, got the beers in, gave ourselves a right good talking to and started cheering, high fiving and making as much noise as we could to instil a winning team spirit, and guess what? It worked! We beat Team Deputy by 30 points in the bowling, I played one of my best games of bowling ever and was narrowly pipped to 1st place by Kathryn of Team Deputy but it didn't matter, we had done enough to pull it back and be crowned 2012 JCI Barnsley Triathlon winners.

I think we all learnt a few things about ourselves during the course of the day. Ben is highly competitive and gets very annoyed with himself if he doesn't get a strike. Emma and myself are not good at laser tag, Scott is pretty good at crazy golf and Phil is better at bowling than his previous JCI bowling attempts!

In true JCI Barnsley style we rounded off the afternoon with some leaving drinks for myself and Phil, a good meal and then 7 of us went to see Batman Rises Again and didn't get home until after 2am on Sunday morning.

JCI Barnsley is ace, our members are enthusiastic, fun and hardcore and I wouldn't have them any other way!

Kirstie Barnett, President 2012