Once a year in the spring we had community track meets for local country schools that included Pleasant Valley School for kids grade one through eight. There was no such thing as kindergarten at the time I grew up. Barnsville, Lone Tree, Olin were some of the other schools that participated. These schools were similar in that the school was contained in one two-story building that taught 8 grades of children.
The teachers were all a buzz about training us kids to do well in competition with the other schools. At a set aside time during the day, we practiced running the 100 yard dash, high jumping and broad jumping. I can’t remember what we wore during this practice time as little girls usually wore dresses or skirts top school. I imagine we just practiced in our regular clothes as there wasn’t any place to change or store our clothes in lockers.
The high jump was a pole supported by two uprights with nail holes every inch. The nail was moved up for every increment as kids competed. We all stood in line and took turns jumping over the pole into a sand pit. If the pole was knocked off, then you dropped out until there was a declared winner. The younger kids were eliminated early on while the older kids keep on trying to jump over the pole. I’m not sure how that system worked to increase your skills as the poor performers were pulled aside while the high performers had more and more time to practice.
I liked high jumping and always tried real hard to jump high enough to the keep the pole suspended. I can’t imagine wearing dresses as the flare of the dress would have caught on the pole. I think we just kind of stepped over the pole anyway instead of jumping like the athletes do now with style and finesse to barely clear the pole.
Broad jump was also a fun sport. We would run as fast as we could and leap at the starting mark into the sand pit. They didn’t really explain the finer rules of board jumping. They just said to jump as far as you could. I think we had three tries to beat our and other children’s scores. Some times you would fall back onto your hands or touch your feet over the starting line and lose a good score.
Running was never my game. We had to do it anyway. There were kids who were built for running that did the 100 yard dash in record time; at least lightening speed compared to us slow pokes. There were relays where we ran with a baton back and forth in teams of four trying to beat out the other competitors.
Once we were trained, off we would go to the other schools to compete. I think our Mom’s volunteered to take a car load of kids to the school that was hosting the event. It must have been an all day affair. By this time we must have wore jeans to school on event day. Little kids really didn’t wear short at that time.
It was always a fun day. When we participated in our events that were grouped by grades ribbons were handed out: blue for first place, red for second and white for third. The rest of us received green or yellow ribbons for participating.
In between events we hung around with our friends and gossiped about the kids from the other schools. The Mom’s must have brought sack lunches for us to eat as we sat on the grass under a tree. I don’t remember that there were any concession stands for pop or candy. This was very low tech and probably helped keep kids slimmer than our counterparts today who are always sporting a big sugary drink, chips or candy bars.