“I don't really know,” said the athlete - who is 8 years old - when confronted by the media after the event. “I didn't know if I could (even) still get second, but I tried. I just tried.”
Mytty was among 280 kids at Dornblaser Field for the Missoula Youth Track Club's first meet of the year. Clad in a rainbow assortment of day-glo T-shirts, the competitors were put through a complete battery of events in front of an energetic crowd that filled about half of the metal bleachers.
Peewees hopped over two-foot hurdles made from PVC pipe and tossed softballs for distance. Older kids hurdled slightly larger barriers and threw a small shot put and plastic Turbo Javelins.
There were some nasty spills on the track, but none that seemed to slow down the racers for long.
Nine year-old Abbey Teagle was there with her father Paul, hanging out on the infield after she'd completed her events. Abbey, who is a student at Frenchtown Elementary, said of all the events her favorite is the hurdles.
“I get to run and jump,” she said.
Paul Teagle said he was having a great time watching the kids compete in different events and that he wanted his daughter to have a good time and learn the basics of competition.
“I think it just has a lot of carry-over to other sports,” Teagle said, “and it helps them learn to try their hardest.”
If nearly 300 kids spread out on the infield at Dornblaser equated to organized chaos, the steady eye of the storm was Mary Thane, a Missoula area physical therapist who helped to organize the youth track program along with a small group of ringleaders and volunteers.
Thane said she competed in a similar program growing up in Kalispell, going from an aspiring peewee to a high school-aged coach to an adult who still competes as a master's level runner.
“When I had children of my own it was obvious that Missoula didn't have a track program for little kids,” Thane said. “So I had just mentioned it to a few people and they grabbed onto the idea and people stepped forward and we've been going ever since.”
The Missoula program, which is sanctioned by USA Track and Field, is in its seventh year and continues to swell in numbers. Thane confessed she didn't get to see many of the events on Tuesday, busy as she was running crowd control, peddling free sandwiches to volunteers and generally keeping order.
Still, she was there to scoop up Mytty's lost shoe and jog it to the finish line to return it to its owner.
“I think the kids even surprise themselves,” she said. “They find events that, wow, they didn't know that they could be good at. That's the most fun, is watching the smiles on the kids' faces. A lot of them feel the success from finishing the race or trying something new and the support that they get from their coaches.”
About 80 high school track athletes, mostly from Missoula Sentinel and Hellgate, donate their time as coaches for the youth track club. Each prep is given a small “team” of youth club members to coach throughout the season.
They hand out instruction, do their fair share of babysitting and deal with the smiles and tears inherent in children's sports, all of them putting in a couple of hours a week even as Western AA track divisionals approach at the high school level.
“When we started this program I really thought of it as being something for the youth, but in the last couple of years it's become obvious that it's a big thing for the high school kids too,” Thane said. “They look forward to it, they ask every year, ‘When are we going to start?' and they come with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.”
Daniel Hamilton, a junior who runs the 1,600 and 3,200 meters for the Spartans, was at the meet coaching his team with a couple of ice bags taped to his own legs.
Hamilton, himself a product of the Missoula youth track program, said he likes having fun with the kids while trying to instill the fundamentals that could one day be the foundation for a successful high school career.
Coaching can also be a good respite, he said.
“It's really kind of nice when you've been doing high school stuff, as far as homework and stuff like that, to come and mess around with some little kids for a while,” Hamilton said. “It's a little break.”
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