Snowshoeing for Special Olympics

On Friday Victoria and Susan left early in the morning to ride a school bus to Magic Mountain, near Twin Falls, Idaho. Victoria went to compete in regional Special Olympics in snowshoeing.

Vicki has been doing this for a couple of years now. She "trains" once a week and then just goes and runs her little heart out and has a blast. Last year I got to go to Sun Valley and spend two days with her while she competed. It was really fun. Victoria is so outgoing that she would just run up to anyone and make friends with them. We'd be walking around and she'd point to the National Guard people and say, "There's Sgt. Johnson!" and head over to say hi. They'd greet her by name and start talking to her. It was really funny; everyone knew her by name. She was the youngest competitor there. On the way to the venue the second day she went and sat right by the coach of the Chinese team (there were several foreign countries there, too). He gave her a gift and all day long the whole Chinese team would greet her when they saw her. I ran into Larry Plott, who was a volunteer there. I knew Larry from when I taught at the police academy; he was the director. I started talking to him and he asked why I was there. I told him my daughter was competing and she was the youngest one there. He said, "Victoria?" He knew her and started telling me stories about her! His wife came up and he introduced me as Victoria's dad. His wife started gushing about Victoria, too! The D.J. knew her and had her on the mic several times. It was really fun to see how she just made friends with everyone.

Anyway, this year was Susan's turn to go with her. They had a blast! Victoria got two first-place ribbons and a second-place ribbon. The funny thing is, I don't know if the kids even realize (or care) what place the ribbon is. They probably don't even realize that every kid in the race gets a ribbon! They just care that they are there and they are having fun. So much can be learned from them. They are "competing" but most don't care about winning. They are just having fun and that's all that matters. So different from the little league horror stories of parents duking it out or killing the coach or something.

Maybe we need to examine the importance we place on winning and competing and make kids sports (or other activities) more about playing to have fun. When Vicki was bowling last fall, the kids got just as excited over knocking over one pin as getting a strike (and actually, after the first 3 frames of zeros in game one, a pin was a pretty big deal! I didn't realize a bowling ball could travel the whole lane in 38 seconds and still knock something down).