Braving mid-spring snow and frosty temperatures, 14 Olds Special Olympians packed up their gear on the morning of April 19 and embarked from the Bowl bowling alley for the Special Olympics Alberta Spring Games in Red Deer.
They returned from the games, held from April 19 to 21, with 23 medals in five and 10-pin bowling, including 18 gold medals, four silvers and a bronze.
Gold medalists included the Olds squad's 10-pin team of Barry Robb, Aaron Johnson, Kyle Streit and Mike Dougan and the doubles team of Streit and Dougan, who also won gold in division singles and division overall
Silver medalists included Johnson in division singles and division overall and Robb and Johnson in doubles.
In five-pin, Dolten Cote, Darryl Siemens and Mark Mengersen all won gold in the singles category and, Cote, Steven Hamelin, Kevin McBride, Mengersen and Siemens also won gold in the team category.
And McBride won bronze in the singles category.
Siemens also ended up achieving the highest five-pin singles game score with a tally of 308.
Other participants from Olds included Sheila Kozenko, Christine McBride, Tyler Slack, Derek Hallet and Karen Bystrom.
The coach for the 10-pin team was Marj Cowan, the coach for the five-pin team was Karen Mengersen and a volunteer who assisted the Olds teams was Mike Rooks.
Overall, 80 teams from across the province competed in bowling at the games.
The games brought out 650 Special Olympians from across Alberta and the Northwest Territories who participated in basketball, swimming and bowling.
Karen Mengersen said the Olds contingent will likely know in May if any athletes from Olds will compete with Team Alberta at the 2014 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games in Vancouver.
