St. Mary's Ryken Hosts Annual Special Olympics Games

LEONARDTOWN, Md. – The Special Olympics Maryland – St. Mary’s County held their Annual Games at St. Mary’s Ryken High School in Leonardtown. Starting at 10 a.m., the friendly competition started and the fun began! There were about 170 participants between the public schools and the Special Olympics community program athletes.

The games consisted of track and field with two running venues (one for the 100 meter and the second one for the 25 and 50 meter). There were also wheelchair events, and two jumping events, (one for the standing jump and one for the running jump). Another sport performed was bocce. Finally, three throw venues – two were for softball, one was for a mini jav throw, and shotput.

All the athletes were the winners in the events and activities!

Merchandise was for sale at this event, and it went very well. There are only a couple of events each year where holding sales for merchandise is allowed, and this was a good one with all the families attending.

When asked about how the event went, the Area Director, Jeffery Hagen Sr. replied, “We have been worried all this week about the weather being either cold and windy or wet and windy. But as it turned out, the day was simply beautiful. It started out a little chilly but turned out to be a great weather day after all!”

“We at Special Olympics Maryland-St. Mary’s County (SOMD-SMC) are very appreciative of all the help we received from NAS Patuxent River and all the companies that provided their employees to volunteer for this wonderful event. They helped make it a wonderful event for all those that participated. This was a great day even though we were short some of our staff members, but again, with the help of these volunteers we had a great time.”