National Games - Day 1 Blog

Well it is officially Day One of competition at the 2010 National Games and I must say I fairly confident that Team Ohio will be brining home PLENTY of hardware at the end of these Games. I visited the Powerlifting, Softball, Bocce and Basketball venues today and all of our athletes had their game faces on and were in the zone! Aside from that each athlete I spoke with repeatedly said how much fun they were having. So on the field they are determined, off the field they are having a blast!

First I will go back to Saturday…63 athletes and coaches arrived at 7:30 – 7:50 a.m. in Lincoln. We were the first delegation to arrive via the Cessna Airlift. Thanks to Cessna for donating 13 jets to fly most of our delegation to the Games. The team was then shuttled to the dorms. They checked into their rooms, unpacked and checked out the dorms. Team Ohio is in a newly renovated dorm and only one other group has stayed there prior to the Special Olympics teams. Everything is brand new and most importantly it is air conditioned!! While some of the teams explored the campus others just hung out and napped in the air conditioning. Did I mention it was 98 degrees that day. The rest of the delegation arrived from Omaha via commercial airline about 10 p.m.

Sunday was practice and some divisioning for most sports. The highlight from Sunday was that Andy Roddick visited the tennis venue. He conducted a clinic for all of the tennis athletes and ran them through drills. Then he and another player played Unified Doubles with some of the athletes. Six athletes participated and our very own James Reiter was teamed up with Andy on the court. Can you imagine actually playing tennis with Andy Roddick…what an opportunity. Opening Ceremonies took place at 3 p.m. and Team Ohio proudly marched into Devaney Sports Center 92 strong. The Ceremonies were great and ended with the officers brining in the Torch and a rousing, inspiring speech by Tim Shriver.

Now on to today. Most of our sports were still in divisioning/preliminary mode, however, powerlifitng gets right to it. Two of our powerlifters earned the first medals of the Games for Team Ohio. Hanna Schmautz bench pressed 77.2 lbs. and set a personal record for herself in the deadlift…148.7 lbs. Now mind you Hanna is 97 lbs. and as the athletes were deboarding the planes I pointed out the powerlifting team to a reporter. Her exact words, “Even that little girl?” Yes she is small but she is fierce! She went on to earn a silver in the bench a silver in the press and the first gold medal for Team Ohio in the combined! Nathan Michael exhibited equal determination in his lifts. He was one judges vote shy of of a personal best in the deadlift. He earned silver medals across the board in the bench press, deadlift and combined. Congratulations!

Our team sports dominated as well today. Our men’s softball team defeated Florida 21 – 1 and Kentucky 29 – 1. Those guys are big, tough and they can hit the ball out of the park! The men’s basketball team played Indiana in non pool play and then officically moved on to Texas in pool play. They defeated Texas 29 – 22….keep in mind they are only playing two 13 minute periods with a running clock, hence the low score. Thanks for supporting Team Ohio…they are loving every hot minute of it!

Paige Ludwig
Marketing & Development Director

Posted: 2010-07-19