Untitled Document

Smiles a plenty
PHS students help with Special Olympics

There were 265 participants at the Special Olympics basketball event at Weede Gymnasium Friday, but there were countless smiles.

Poke Stover, Special Olympics Kansas Southeast area director, said that the smiles on the participants and volunteers' faces were the best part about the events.

"It's seeing them having that smile on their face getting along and socializing with the other athletes," Stover said. "I think a lot of the volunteers, once they help once, they are hooked. Once they move, they volunteer in other areas. They enjoy it as much as the athletes."

The southeast Kansas area includes 14 counties and more than 900 athletes, most of whom participate in the track and field events. This year's track competition also will be in Pittsburg.

"It's our largest event," Stover said. "We get about 600 participants. It might be more than that this year, we were real close to it last year. Basketball is just starting to come back - it's grown from maybe 75 to 265. That's a big jump."

Ten adult basketball teams competed in the tournament, while the rest of the competitors faced off in individual skill competitions, testing shooting, passing and dribbling abilities.

One of those individuals was Nathanial Korth, a student manager for the Pittsburg High School basketball team. The winner of two medals last year, Korth finished this year with three - two golds and a silver. He finished off his medal in the free throw contest by knocking down his shot before thrusting his hands in the air and jumping around.

"Way to knock them down," yelled Tom Burns, Korth's teacher at PHS.

"Knockin' them down," Korth said. "Just knockin' them down."

Several of the Pittsburg High School players were there to support Korth, and Jack Thomas, a senior guard for the Purple Dragons, said it wasn't unusual to see him celebrate.

"He has a lot of fun when he makes shots, he usually goes pretty crazy," Thomas said. "Nathanial helps us out with our basketball team, so we figured that we would help out."

Stover said that the bulk of the volunteers came from PHS, Girard High School, Humboldt High School and Pittsburg State University.

"Without them it would be really hard to have anything," Stover said. "We always get a lot of good volunteers while we're here. This is the first year we've had the basketball at Pittsburg in awhile. We've had it in Parsons for the last six or seven years but we've outgrown the facilities in Parsons, so we brought it back. We had done it in Pittsburg for about 15 years before, but then we broke down so we didn't have many teams.

"Pittsburg has always been great to us," Stover said. Pittsburg State University, and Tom Bryant, he's been awesome. Whatever we ask for, he gives us. It's really worked out well."

The Morning Sun, (www.morningsun.net) February 25, 2006