Rotary District Disability Games
The Annual Disability Games organised by the East Midlands District of Rotary Clubs was held at Ratcliffe College Independent School on Sunday 12th April.
This was the third and final year that Leicestershire Rotary Clubs were hosts to this long running and extremely popular event which attracted competitors of all ages and disabilities and their carers to enjoy experiencing numerous activities geared to their mental and physical disabilities.
Rotary Clubs from Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire form links with charities and groups supporting people with disabilities and together enable them to have opportunity to experience this completely free and thoroughly enjoy the day.
Activities that were available to competitors included table tennis, weightlifting, rowing machine, swimming, shooting the basketball hoop, darts, wheelchair racing, kurling (indoor carpet curling), boccia (indoor carpet bowls), target ball with a giant wall mounted board target and archery.
The Rotary Club of the Wreake Valley, together with the Soar Valley Archery club, organised the archery event. The archery club provided all the equipment and Health and Safety requirements. Several of their members then provided the help and expertise to enable the competitors o shoot their arrows into the targets with Rotary Club members helping with the registration of competitors and keeping them in an orderly queue awaiting their turn.
Despite it being a very cold and windy morning, the archery events remains a firm and popular activity attracting 74 entrants out of the almost 200 attending the games. Sadly, the weather had the last laugh due to wind and rain causing the shooting of arrows to be unsafe, the event had to be cut short at lunchtime. The winning scores out of a possible 60 points were 47 for the adult male; 41 for the adult female and 32 for the juniors. Trophies for winning scores or times for each event at the games were presented at the end of the day.
It was a wonderful and inspiring day for both competitors and volunteer to see the looks of joy and achievement on so many happy faces. The Disability Games transfer to a Northampton location next year and we wish the organisers, volunteers and competitors best wishes for a great day.
