TWENTY ONE MEDALS – two golds and 19 bronzes.
That’s how many medals a team of children with special educational needs returned to Barbados with after competing in the PowerGen Sports And Fun Day in Penal, Trinidad, earlier this month.
At a short service held in the team’s honour at the Ann Hill School in the Pine, teacher Natalie Alleyne said it was a memorable experience for them all.
“We have high expectations of our children [but] we [took] some students that we know were not necessarily athletes but needed the opportunity to travel abroad,” she said.
Explaining that the contingent of 15 athletes came from the Irving Wilson School, Ellerton Special Unit, Erdiston Special School, Charles F. Broome and Eagle Hall Primary, she said some of the students had participated in the recently concluded Pine Hill Dairy National Primary Schools’ Athletics Championships (NAPSAC).
“Persons at the school would have been responsible for preparing their students. The PE teachers and persons in charge of sports worked really hard to get the children ready for the games. We also would have been preparing for the Special Olympics, which would have helped in the preparation,” Alleyne said.
“Teachers from each school would have gone along and that would have helped to give the students some level of confidence in adapting to the new environment.
“Most of the teachers who went work in special education and work closely with the students, so we would have chosen students we knew would have been able to handle the transition.”
Alleyne highlighted one of their top athletes in ten-year-old Mwamba Browne, but said she they all performed beyond her expectations.
“Athletics is Mwamba’s gift, I would say. You have to understand in special ED sometimes our children have various gifts and he is gifted in the area of athletics,” she said.
“We performed well, considering there were 1 500 children and we had a small contingent of 15 children. For me, we did well and it’s not just about the meet, but it’s about the experience of travelling, being able to go on the aeroplane for the first time; it’s all those other educational experiences that the children get.”
Browne, who attends Erdiston and participated in NAPSAC, returned with three medals: one gold and two bronze.
“I do the sack race, the 100 metres and the 800 metres. The races were good [and] it feels good to win,” he said.
Preparation for him was key and he ran laps around the school’s pasture to get himself ready for the sporting meets.
“I used to train almost every day; it was hard and I run a lot. NAPSAC was good too. I beat some of my friends,” he said smiling brightly. (RA)
