KES Attends ACIS @ St. Mary's University

Dear Athletes, Parents and Supporters of KES Track and Field,

Today saw us running, jumping and throwing at the annual ACIS Track and Field Meet at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax under clear, warm skies and a bit of breeze.  Our team of 50 KES athletes and coaches competed against seven other Atlantic Canadian Independent Schools.  In an effort to save time, most races are run with an unknown mixture of juniors, intermediates an seniors in the same heat.  Teasing apart who placed where in which division is a bit like taking the knots out of a kite string: it’s difficult to do and your kite can still fly high even with the knots.  Last year we did not receive official results until June, and I expect that will be the same this year.  Suffice it to say that we won a lot of races both individually and as relays and I have no doubt we won the meet overall.  There will be many new entries on the Wall of Payne and those will be announced when we have those in hand.  

There are a few obvious changes from last year that are clearly worth pointing out.  We have broadened our coaching reach into field events: Mr.Jeff Smith has undertaken his role as throws coach with great gusto and a want for perfection.  Mr.Marcel Rochon and Mr.Rick Lin have spent many hours in the sand pit of long jump and triple jump, and Mr.Manny Avila has started driving a few of our athletes far up the road to Central Kings for pole vault instruction.  Though there was no high jump today, Mr.Derek Bouwman has them ready for next week.  We also took it upon ourselves to really live the goal of developing all-round athletes.  To that end, all of our teammates have cycled through each of the jumps, hurdles (Mr.Avila) and throws.  The great results are beginning to be seen not only in further distances, but the fact that we more than doubled our competitors today over last year in the shot put and long jump.

A good sign of a great team camaraderie and dispersed leadership roles is how few questions the coaches are asked along the lines of: What do I do now?  Where do I go?  What time do I do this or that?  The coaches were asked very few questions along those lines today because so many of our kids were helping one another with those questions, and so many of them have been responsible enough to know that information and to be prepared.  That said, the many-hands of organization Ms.Sue Bouwman did not go unnoticed and she certainly deserves credit for things moving so smoothly today.   Of course, without the ceaseless energy of Mr.Guy Payne each of us would have many additional items on our checklist.

Now to the scribes time-saving idiom that a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll direct you to Mr.Avila’s photos (attached).  You can find more of these and in better resolution on our KES Track and Field page.  

 

You will see the schedule for our District Championship (May 19, 20) on the KES Track and Field page.  We will finalize entries this weekend and I will send out those and a separate email about bus departure times on Monday, at the latest.

 
We hope to see many of you at Acadia next week!

- Phillip Hadley