Newcastle schools represented at Special Olympics
Newcastle High School volunteers from multiple organizations — the Student Council, Future Business Leaders of America, Future Farmers of America, Sources of Strength, and National Honor Society — have lent their services to the school’s Special Olympics program.
The students volunteered to help with the Special Olympics Area IV Winter Games at Terry Peak Ski Area in South Dakota last month. Volunteers from STUCO were Rebekah Olson, Baleigh Knight and Samuel Cunningham; from FFA, Brock Bergstrom; and from FBLA, Samuel Cunningham. Tiernan Stanton, who represented STUCO, FBLA, SOS, and NHS, helped behind the scenes.
Special Olympics are for athletes who have specific qualifying disabilities (not all disabilities automatically qualify one for Special Olympics). This year, Newcastle had four athletes from our schools that competed in the events.
Candi Stanton has been coaching and facilitating the local Special Olympics program for 18 years — since its inception — and Chad Ostenson has been coaching for about eight years. They said many adult volunteers have helped throughout the years and have been valuable to the success of the local program, and one of those volunteers is Sally Chord. She has been contributing to the effort for many years, and this year assisted the athletes at both area and state games.
Ostenson takes the athletes nearly every Wednesday after Christmas break to Terry Peak, from about 8:10 a.m. to the end of school at 3 p.m. The instructors try to go before Christmas if there is enough snow, but they and always plan for training dates after Christmas through the first part of March. If there is not enough snow by then, the lodge will make snow so that skiers can train, Ostenson said.
On Friday, Feb. 24, the athletes got a chance to let their training payoff when they went to Terry Peak to compete in the Area IV games against athletes from other places in the region. Newcastle’s representatives competed in the Area IV event in hopes of going on to the State Winter Games in Jackson, Wyoming a few weeks later.
The athletes can compete in many different events, including cross-country skiing, snowshoeing (including races that range from a mile to 100 yards), a 10-meter walk on skis, a skiing glide event and a glide slalom race for the beginner-ranked competitors. For proficient and advanced athletes, there is a slalom and a giant slalom. A slalom race is a race where the skiers ski around the outside of the poles set on a course down the mountain.
The Newcastle athletes performed well, and as a result also competed at the Wyoming Winter Games on March 15-17. This was the first time since COVID that the games had been held in person. For some of the athletes, this was their first time participating in the state games.
