Sub-County Track Meet

I have posted before about being the running coach for the Running Club at the Village of Eden school. This is a club composed of 3rd - 5th graders.

For the month of March, the all the 3rd - 7th grade students rotated between Soccer, Volleyball, Netball, Basketball and Running.  Then, they had to choose a sport to stick with for the rest of the term.  The fourteen best, smartest, greatest, most wonderful students chose running!  (not biased at all, but running club is the BEST club)

 We were invited to attend a sub-county track meet at a local school.  I was a bit nervous because we actually only practiced with this group two times!

We drove the 10 minutes to Buluguyi Primary School.  

Thanks to Joyce, from Alaska. She brought us these great shirts!  We had matching team shirts.

After all the teams arrived, we gathered for announcements.  There were 13 schools represented!

These are the Athletics coaches.  They were always huddled together talking and discussing.  I was the only woman coach!

They stamped all the athletes.  That way, only the athletes could compete and teams couldn't cheat.

There were a lot of "supporters" - the kids who came to cheer on their school.

Our kids were pretty nervous - we had a pretty young team and very inexperienced.

The races were pretty physical.  Lots of pushing and shoving in the start.

There were well over 2,000 people!  Everywhere! 

Malachi was the ONLY white boy competing!  The only one of 2,000!  

I stayed in the middle of the field, lining up runners.  Claudia and Heather kept up with my other runners while they waited.

This guy laid down a stick to count laps as the runners went around.

This tree was full of kids all day long - different kids, different colored uniforms, but always full.

The girls were always pretty aggressive. But our students never fought back. They were so well behaved!

These are my two 3rd graders.  They were not afraid at all!  They wanted to run.  I lined them up.

I started noticing that my boys were only reaching the waist of the other kids!

Someone said, "This is 12 - 14 years!"  

I said, "You said under 12.  They want to run.  Is there an under 12 race?"

"No"

"Can they run in this one?"

A lady walked up and said, "Let them compete."

So, they competed.

I am not sure why the boy in green is threatened by my boy but my guy is not going to let him slow him down!

I was shouting, "Go, go go!"

Our guys were dead last. They actually were lapped!  But, they finished their two laps. I was so proud of them!

They have the high jump!  We didn't have any competitors for that, so we just watched.

By this time, our kids were very tired and hungry.

Then lunch and Anna arrived!

Drew and Amy went back to the VOE to get some posho and beans for everyone.

Then, there was the javelin throw.  I don't know much about this event, but it doesn't seem like they are holding it correctly.

So many people.  We were probably up to 4 or 5,000 at this point.

Time for the 100 meter race.  

One of our problems was that there were so many people, they kept getting in our running lanes!

There were 2 false starts on this race.  Then, with the real start, the man didn't give warning, so Malachi had a slow start.  

One boy told Malachi he should take off his shoes because they were too heavy.  Malachi was the ONLY  competitor wearing shoes.  

As each race came to an end, the people would push forward and crowd the field.

At the end, we huddled up to debrief.  We did not win in any event.  But that was okay.  We had fun.  We gained a new experience.  We all finished our races, even though we were usually the last ones on the track.  We didn't give up.  We played with integrity.  We had good sportsmanship.  

I was so proud of my kids!  So proud.