Brant Avenue Public School students did a great thing. Not only did they compete against 700 kids from across Ontario in the Start2Finish 5K Running and Reading Challenge, and win. They also rushed to aid some struggling runners that were having trouble crossing the finish line.
“That is what Brant Avenue is all about,” said an emotional Mair Gault, principal of the east side Guelph school. She’s still choked up about it. When she saw her students first win the race and then run down the course to help others finish, she was moved to tears, she said.
Last Saturday, hundreds congregated at York University in Toronto for the national Start2Finish event. Start2Finish is an organization dedicated to the eradication of the effects of child poverty. There were races in other communities across the country.
The organization helps at-risk children throughout their school years to succeed. The organization's running and reading clubs foster well-being of mind, body and social health. There are 33 such clubs across Canada, with a push to reach 50 over the next couple of years.
Brant Avenue is the second school in the Upper Grand District School Board to run the program, with Willow Road Public School being the first.
“This was such a great example of that quote that says 'it takes a whole village to raise a child,'” Gault said. “Because this program is so dependent on the combination of school staff and community support.”
The program has a 32-week duration, and is run primarily by up to 30 community volunteers and some Brant Avenue staff members. It has been run that way for three years.
“Without them it wouldn’t exist,” she said. “They are the core of the program, because above and beyond the children knowing that the school cares about them, there is a community that cares about them.”
There are 50 Brant Avenue students from grade 3 to 6 in the program, engaging in training for a 5K run, in a take-home fitness program, character education lessons and literacy skills training. All of this culminates in the 5K Challenge.
Brant Avenue placed first in reading and running, and first overall.
“Our kids did amazingly well in the running component,” Gault said, adding the finishing time of all 50 runners is averaged out and put up against the average time of all other schools. “In order to win, your whole team has to cross the finish-line, your whole team has to do their best in order to win. It was a whole team accomplishment.”
But what really impressed the principal was Brant Public’s sportsmanship.
“At the finish line there were these kids coming up the edge,” she said. “The heat was dreadful, and these kids were coming up the tail-end. Some of them were crying. They were coming to that last lap."
Without any prompting from the adults, the Brant Avenue kids sprang into action.
"I saw our students – kids who had finished the race in that heat – running back down the track to kids who weren’t even on their team, coming along side of them, cheering them on and running them across the finish-line," Gault said. "That was more important than the win.”
