There were 460 young athletes took part in the Annual Deer Park Elementary School Cross Country meet on Monday, says Calder School principal Pat Holtkamp.

Schools participating included: Calder, Canora Junior, Churchbridge, Columbia School, Dr. Brass, Grayson, Hoffman, Langenburg High, MC Knoll, the Melville Comprehensive School, Miller, Saltcoats, Springside, Sturgis Comprehensive, Yorkdale and the Yorkton Regional High School Gr. 9 students.

“This year, we have 460 athletes,” says Holtkamp. They come from 16 different schools and competed in a series of races that provided them with a pretty good tour of the Deer Park back nine holes of the 18 hole golf course.

“This is a beautiful facility to have it at,” she said with some enthusiasm in her voice. “There’s gotta be about 200 parents/grandparents watching,” she added.

“This is the first meet of the school year for us.”
The categories were Squirt up to Midget. Squirt is under 9 years of age. Midget means under 15 years of age.

In between are beginner, sneaker, wee pee, pee wee and bantam.

There are medals awarded to the top three finishers in each category, Holtkamp said.

The first three categories ran 2000-metres/2-kilometres and the last four categories ran 3-kilometres.

“They’re doing really well,” she said. “We started training at the start of the school year.”

Other cross country events coming up are the Cherrydale meet and the Saltcoats meet to close out the month of September and then districts are tentatively slated for October.