After spending the day at The University of Alberta last week, 20 students from Westlock Elementary School earned the opportunity to go back next month.
Both the WES boys and girls relay teams won their heats at the Edmonton Journal Indoor Games 8 x 200 metre relay, earning the right to advance to the quarterfinals on March 19.
“They’re always excited to make it past the first round. Now they know they have to practise and get their time down,” said Dan McDonald, who coaches the teams along with Rob Weiss.
The races are set up so that the fastest team in each heat advances to the quarterfinals, as well as the teams who got the fastest 28 times overall. Both teams met both those criteria.
The girls team won their heat with a time of 4:43.10, the sixteenth fastest time overall. The fastest time, posted by Barrhead’s team, was 4:27.90.
The boys team won their heat with a time of 4:34.10, the seventeenth fastest overall. The fastest time was 4:17.00, posted by Keheewin School. McDonald has been involved with coaching the team for at least 10 years, he said, so he has a good deal of experience under his belt.
There was a pretty substantial amount of student interest in the teams. When they held tryouts in January, more than 50 students took part.
“We had about 30 boys and 30 girls come out,” he said. “We took the 10 fastest boys and 10 fastest girls.”
It is good preparation for students who want to take part in more team sports — there is a strong focus on sportsmanship, camaraderie, and teamwork.
The best part of it, however, is getting to take part in such a big organized event, with teams from about 200 different schools taking part.
“Just the experience of going to university for three days in Grade 6 — they just think it’s great that they get to go to university,” McDonald said.
