The Cheetah’s (who needs running shoes?)

                                                                   

The Cheetah’s  (By: Lindsay)

Its been awhile since our last posts, not because we have little to say but because we’ve been busy.

On Friday March 6th the students and staff of the Gospel School for the Deaf were decked out in their bright orange apparel. On this day we (the Gospel School for the Deaf) represented the Cheetah’s, as we competed in track and field against the students from the hearing school. We had about 20 athletes compete on March 6th, seven of them will compete in the final competitions on April 3rd. One of them took first place in the 200m and 400m, several others taking second and third.  What a joy it has been to help coach these young athletes. Not only do I love the sport of running but these kids remind me of young olympic competitors (Jamaica in 2008 olympics). These girls have defined arm muscles and can out run most boys I know.  I love running so on the first day of practice I thought I’d train with the kids that lasted only a day. I preferred not embarrassing myself as these 13 and 14 year old girls “smoked me”– “left me in the dust“- I’m jumping over wet mud puddles and they’re trudging right through them.  That was the end of that! I then became assistant coach to Jim Cooney. 

Our Cheetahs may not be able to hear the starting gun go off  but that doesn’t put them at a disadvantage because they can run like the wind. They don’t hear their opponent closing in on them- so they just GO- with the finish line the only thing in mind. They’re not concerned that they don’t have brightly colored running shoes or Nike running apparel, they’re just concerned about winning. They run barefoot, in whatever clean clothes they have and sometimes it may mean jean shorts.  Bring them to America and they’d put our youth runners to shame- barefoot for that matter. My only wish for them was that they could hear us cheering for them! 

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