Rivendell Takes Home Gold in Special Olympics

The Special Olympic games were just completed this week at Pico Ski resort. The Special Olympics are a time for teams of people with special needs to compete in different athletic events. Usually only 1 or 2 types of games will be played during an Olympics, but there are many throughout the year. The Rivendell Academy special olympic team attended and took home 5 gold, 5 silver, and 6 Bronze medals. From our Rivendell Academy Arianna Bauman and Elyssa Riso went and ran in many snowshoe events, including the 50 meter and the 25 meter, which they medaled in.They rounded out a team with other athletes from our local area and elementary schools including Julian, Jacob, Isaiah and Trevor. This team of athletes raced against kids from all across the state including kids from Upper Valley Hawks, Grantham schools, Bellows Free Academy and Nate’s Place.

This is the first year that the games were held at Pico mountain. Previous years have been hosted by Suicide Six Ski Mountain. The games had been getting too big for Suicide Six and the lodge at Pico was much larger than Suicide Six’s and could accommodate the growing popularity of the games. The new change in venue initially caused a lot of confusion because the housing was at Killington while the events were hosted at Pico which are owned by the same company and are a 15 minute drive from each other. Once the initial confusion was sorted away the games proceeded to run much smoother in large part because of the bigger venue allowed more freedom for different events.

This year, our athletes participated throughout the whole week of games. Rivendell had athletes compete in Alpine skiing and Snowshoeing. Historically, Rivendell has had success during the winter games and this year was no different! By the end of the first day of games Elyssa won a gold medal in the 50 Meter snowshoe race and, in the same race Arianna Bauman won bronze. Both these races came early in the day. By the end of the 2nd day most of our athletes had earned a place on the podium to get a medal for their achievements. Next the Rivendell academy team plans on taking on the competition in the bocce (defending champions) and basketball (first entry).