Summer Games 2014 is upon us! Stewart Home School’s athletes and coaches are geared up for a weekend of competition on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky.!
To start off the weekend (this Friday) we will welcome the official Special Olympics Torch Run to our campus. This group is comprised of nearly 50 personnel from local and state law enforcement and military branches, who will run through our campus carrying the SOKY Torch. There will be a campus ceremony full of music, special guest speakers, and celebration! We are so honored to be a part of the last leg of the Torch Run and we can’t thank Special Olympics Kentucky, Jayna Oakley, and Capt. Amanda Donelan enough to include us in such an amazing annual event.
Friday afternoon we will load all of our athletes for a one hour drive to Richmond, where we will get settled in at the hotel, and leave for EKU for supper. After supper we will join all of the other +1,000 Special Olympics participants for the Parade of Athletes, followed by the opening ceremonies. Here each group is recognized, cheered, and entertained by musical performances.
The next morning we will suit up, power up (eat), and leave for our events! Our football teams (Panthers & Wildcats) will leave and compete in two games each, where they will be facing evenly matched competition. Each team has 8 (16 total) dedicated athletes that can’t wait to tear up the gridiron. The Aquatics crew, made up of 17 athletes, will be the next group, and these athletes will hit the waves with the force of the mighty salmon battling upstream. These swimmers never give up! Lastly we have a large contingent for the track & field competition. This group is comprised of 29 track-thrashing athletes that run with the heart of a lion and the speed of a cheetah.
After all of the events are over we all get to let loose that Saturday Night with a dance of epic proportions! No matter how tired we are, we still know how to get down and boogie! If they gave gold medals out for cuttin’ a rug, we’d clean house! Then on Sunday morning we will load up all the luggage, grab some breakfast, and hit the road back to Stewart Home School!
All in all we will have 64 super excited athletes and 9 very proud coaches. All the hard work of the last couple of months has led up to this weekend and we are so ready! Wish us luck and we can’t wait to tell you how we did!
Visit our local Special Olympics website. We love our SOKY office and appreciate all they do for us at Stewart Home School. http://www.soky.org/
