Woodstock Police Hosting Special Olympics Flag Raising

Friday, 22 March 2019 10:18

Woodstock Police, the Knights of Olympics and local athletes will be raising the flag for Special Olympics on Monday.

WOODSTOCK - Woodstock Police, the Knights of Olympics and local athletes will be raising the flag for Special Olympics on Monday.

They will have a ceremony at 4:00 p.m. in front of the Woodstock Police Detachment. The ceremony will begin with some opening remarks and will feature the athletes who have qualified for the inaugural Invitational Youth Games from College Avenue Secondary School.

Woodstock is one of 50 communities across Ontario having a flag raising ceremony on Monday to commemorate the the games are only 50 days away. Law Enforcement Torch Run Representative for Woodstock Police Deb Klemp says the goal of the ceremony is to raise awareness and they are also going to issue a challenge to the community.

"We are going to put out a challenge and it has already been issued by Special Olympics Ontario, it is called draft an athlete and what we are looking to do is raise enough funds to send all these athletes, cover there costs, accommodations and food so they are able to go to the games, otherwise they are not able to do that and we figure it will cost about $1,000."

Communities taking part in Special Olympics Day have an overall goal of $50,000 for the Draft an Athlete fundraiser to help send their local qualified athletes to the Games. Each community has a featured campaign on the Draft an Athlete web site.

Right now they have about 2,000 athletes in Ontario looking to be drafted and you can find out how online here.

The Games will feature five sports: basketball, bocce, floor hockey, track and field and soccer.

All five will offer two types of team divisions: a traditional division, where athletes on the team have an intellectual disability, and, a unified division, where athletes with and without and intellectual disability will have the opportunity to compete on the same team. All sports will be broken down into multiple ability divisions, where athletes will have the opportunity to compete against those of similar ability levels.