The Knights of Columbus Indoor Track Meet
Knights of Columbus Indoor track meet. I think that most people participated in this indoor track meet. All the elementary schools sent teams. There were athletes from all even high school and even other towns and cities. There were celebrity athletes. I really should not have been there. I was not a very good athlete. But I went and tried my best. In those days there was track and field day at school and depending on how you did at the school level determined if you would be chosen for the K of C meet. I remember giving it my all around the wooden track in the arena, so much so that I was losing control, blanked out and swerved out of my lane and off the track. But it was great exposure to track and field. I think I was in grade six when I ran in it. Apparently, this track meet had been going on since 1975. John Barker wrote about the first meet in 2015. Concerning the beginning, he wrote…
” The first Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 indoor games was held Jan. 18, 1975 and the cost of the original plywood track was $7,500. The Knights of Columbus had promised to sponsor the indoor event a year earlier. For the inaugural event in 1975, the knights brought in some notable track and field stars to launch it, including 27-year-old Abby Hoffman, the Canadian record holder in the women’s 800-metre event. Hoffman competed in four Olympic Games for Canada in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976; four Pan American Games and two Commonwealth Games and was Canada’s flag-bearer at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. Ann-Marie Davis, the Manitoba record holder for the 800 and 1,500-metre events, and Bruce Pirnie, the 309-pound Canadian shot put champion, who also competed in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games, were also on hand in Thompson on that January day in 1975 for the first such track and field meet in Northern Manitoba sponsored by Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961.”
Some of these pictures are from recent track meets in Thompson, but the kids’ struggles were the same in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In the comments section is John Barker’s article in 2015. The newspaper article was saved by my dad. It is from around 1976.
Does anyone remember running in the Knights of Columbus track meet? Did anyone else swerve out of their lane? Were you an organizer?
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