More than 250 Special Olympic athletes continue on their quest for gold today at Blue Knob All Seasons Resort.
\nThe resort is the venue for the 2003 Special Olympics Pennsylvania Winter Games skiing event. This is the third year in a row that Blue Knob hosted the alpine and cross country skiing competitions.
\n\u201cEverybody is having such a great time here,\u201d said Tim Lyons, director of marketing with Blue Knob and a coordinator of this year\u2019s Special Olympics event. \u201cThere are a lot of athletes out here giving their best, competing hard and having a good time.\u201d
\nThe events kicked off Tuesday evening with opening ceremonies at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena. Jerry Davitch, a former football coach at the United States Air Force Academy and the University of Idaho and current superintendent of Conemaugh Township Area School District, was the 2003 Winter Games Honorary Chairman and spoke at the ceremonies, offering words of encouragement to all the athletes.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s such a good man,\u201d said Lyons. \u201cHe spoke very well and the athletes seemed to enjoy his little talk. He was a good choice.\u201d
\nCompetitions began yesterday with opening rounds of both alpine and Nordic skiing events. The finals are scheduled for this afternoon.
\n\u201cSo far, the event has been running smoothly,\u201d said Lyons yesterday. \u201cWe know the athletes are enjoying themselves and having a good time with the events. This is our third year doing this and it seems to be getting bigger and better every year. Once we finish things up here (today), we\u2019ll be looking forward to next year\u2019s event.\u201d
\nAccording to Lyons, it\u2019s the volunteers that really make the event \u201cshine.\u201d
\n\u201cFor each athlete we have here, we must also have a chaperone,\u201d said Lyons. \u201cRight there there are at least 250 volunteers. Add in all the help we needed to get the skiing areas ready, cook food and serve everybody lunch, and the number of volunteers reaches well over 400.\u201d
\nThe event will conclude this evening with Closing Ceremonies at the War Memorial.
\nAthletes from all across Pennsylvania are in attendance, representing the following counties: Adams, Allegheny, Beaver, Bedford, Berks, Bethlehem, Blair, Centre, Chester, Clinton, Cumberland, Dauphin, Erie, Fayette, Forest, Franklin, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh, Lycoming, Monroe, Montgomery, Perry, Philadelphia, Pike, Schuylkill, Snyder, Susqeuhanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Washington, Wayne, Westmoreland, Wyoming and York.
\nSpecial Olympic Pennsylvania provides year round training and competition in 23 Olympic-type sports to more than 25,000 children and adults with mental retardation or closely related development disabilities. Special Olympics helps people with mental retardation develop fitness, demonstrate courage and inspire greatness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 250 Special Olympic athletes continue on their quest for gold today at Blue Knob All Seasons Resort. The resort is the venue for the 2003 Special Olympics Pennsylvania Winter Games skiing event. This is the third year in a row that Blue Knob hosted the alpine and cross country skiing competitions. \u201cEverybody is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}