The Mystery Files

The Mystery Of Sticks And Stones

The clues: A stick with strange writing on it, a rubber duck with "James Naismith" on the bottom, a creepy looking mask The file label: "Sticks and Stones - Bring 'em Together" The investigation: E.B. has a hunch the writing on the stick is Mohawk, so he meets his friend Kyren on the Mohawk reserve to see if he's right. He finds out the word means Lacrosse in Mohawk and the stick is what First Nations people used hundreds of years ago when they first started playing Lacrosse. Even today Lacrosse is an important sport for First Nations people and it's a way to bring the community together. Meanwhile, Kyla discovers James Naismith is the inventor of basketball. But what does a rubber duck have to do with basketball? She heads to the James Naismith Museum to investigate. There she finds out that a game Naismith played in his childhood called Duck on a Rock was the inspiration for basketball. Naismith invented basketball when he was asked by his school to create a sport that the community could play. He used some of the elements of Duck on a Rock to come up with the sport of basketball. The kids deduce this mystery might be about sports. E.B. meets a sports historian/collector and discovers the mask is one of the first hockey goalie masks ever worn. He also finds out that games from many cultures, including Lacrosse, lead to the hockey we know today. E.B. even gets to play goal against Canadian Olympic medalist Nathalie Spooner!