Sandy Lake’s running club a great motivator for youth

Sandy Lake First Nation entered 15 athletes from its running club in the 2012 Hershey track meet held June 6 at the Royal Canadian Legion Track in Thunder Bay.
Gary Manoakeesic, the team’s assistant coach, said the community has been fielding a track team since 2009 and every year the team is growing.
“The first year we only had eight runners and every year it’s been getting bigger. This year there’s 45 runners in the elementary school running club,” Manoakeesic said. “Half of the team here (Hershey meet) are first timers. Every year there’s always new, younger kids that will enter the team.”
The running club has Peewee, Bantam and Midget runners. Peewee is age 9-10, Bantam 11-12 and Midget 13-14 years old.
“We only have the budget to take 15 runners to compete,” Manoakeesic said. “So we held a qualifying run in Sandy Lake to choose which 15 runners would compete at the Hershey meet in Thunder Bay. We had to do that to cut the team in half.”
This year the running club competes in three races. The first was the 10 mile Fireman marathon in Thunder Bay this past May. The Hershey meet was the second and the last will be the Sandy Lake Diabetes Run, a 15 kilometer race being held October 20 in the community.
For Manoakeesic, competing is a great, healthy motivator for the youth.
“The running club is an excellent way to keep the kids active. It’s a very, very good thing because we are trying to go back to our traditional ways where all Native people used to run. And we’re starting to prove to people that with our youth competing here that they can keep going and do longer marathon runs like the Fireman Race,” he said.
Five runners competed in the 10-mile marathon and they were the first runners that actually joined the track team when it started three years ago. And they finished it,” Manoakeesic said.
For Sandy Lake athletes Gabriel and Jurrien Kakepetum, they both look forward to competing for one reason: winning.
Gabriel has been competing in the Hershey meet for three year in a row and said he wants to keep running “to win.”
Jurrien said he’s been in the running club for two years and wanted to start running because it was fun. And after two years of competition, he said it’s more fun then ever.
“I’m looking forward to coming in first place,” Jurrien said laughing.