SV 8th graders conduct own Winter Olympics
JACKSON TWP — The Seneca Valley Middle School is thousands of miles from Sochi, Russia, which is hosting the Winter Olympics, but that didn't stop the students and teachers from celebrating the Olympics in their own way.
It wasn't hard to locate the venue for Seneca Valley's version of the Olympics, which ran the whole day Wednesday and included eighth grade students.
To find the Olympics, visitors just had to follow the blaring sounds of horns, cowbells, cheers and chants echoing through the corridors in the middle school and coming from the gym where students representing 15 countries competed for medals designed by the art department.
Students were divided by their homerooms and banded together as teams, complete with T-shirts, flags and banners from their adopted home countries.
They competed in more than a dozen events ranging from speed skating and basketball to chess and table tennis.
Teacher Kasey Kraus, who helped organize the event, said that everything had gone fine considering this is the first time for the activity.
“You have a bunch of 14-year-olds at 11 a.m. who're exhausted already,” she said with a smile. “They were so excited. I'm not sure they're going to make it through the afternoon.”
Seneca Valley's Olympics were full of fun and games, but there also were learning components.
For several weeks leading up to the event, students did research into their home countries, studying cultures, languages and histories to help them better represent their teams.
Ruth Johns, a science teacher at the middle school, said she couldn't help but offer her own lessons during the Olympics.
“I saw some students competing in the rowing event earlier,” she said. “I told them they'd do better if they stood up higher to get more leverage. I told them we'd learn about it more in class.”
Johns, who was overseeing a chess match in an adjacent classroom, agreed that the event was a great combination between fun and learning.“They did a lot of research for this and now they get to put it into action and see it applied,” Johns said.But students might not have known they were learning on Wednesday. For most, it was a special day that represented a break from the normal routine of classroom instruction.“It's nice to do something active instead of sitting around in chairs all day,” said Jessica Frank, a Cranberry Township student who won a gold medal in basketball and a silver medal in table tennis while representing Great Britain.Another student, Noah Mancuso of Evans City, won silver in the basketball competition, losing by only two points.“This is awesome,” said Mancuso, who represented Jamaica. “It's great to get out of class and have fun and do something we want to do.”The event's organizers obviously needed some imagination and innovation while creating the competitions. For instance, the curling event was facilitated by tying large bags of oats to a pallet with wheels, which students pushed across the hardwood floor.And the large Olympic rings that hung above the hardwood floor were made out of multicolored hula-hoops.After the event, Kraus said the school will almost certainly try to stage another Olympics later, most likely on an every-other-year basis to mimic the summer and winter games.She also said the organizers are already discussing opening up it for the entire middle school.“Everyone here thought it went very, very well for our maiden voyage,” she said.And for anyone who may be wondering, the medal count from the Seneca Valley competition is one the people of Sochi could probably cheer.The Russian team took the gold, while the Brazilian team took the silver, and the team representing Argentina took bronze.
