Youth Odyssey Runs In King’s Challenge 5k

This past weekend, we had a great time with King’s Crossing Church of Christ. They hosted their annual King’s Challenge 1k & 5k on Saturday and chose to donate a portion of the proceeds to Youth Odyssey. Everyone out there was having a great time enjoying the beautiful weather, good music and free tacos and ice cream! The day started out with the children’s 1k. Boy, those kids were fast! It was so much fun to watch them make their way through the obstacles and back across the finish line. Surprisingly, after all that running, the kids had enough energy to jump in the bounce houses in the kids zone after their run. Oh to be young and have an endless amount of energy.

Runners at the king's challenge 5k
Youth Odyssey crew at the king's challenge 5k

Once all the kids had crossed the finish line, it was time to get everyone ready for the 5k. Youth Odyssey had five participants running, four of our excellent Youth Leaders and Program Facilitator Rick. They all did an outstanding job! Anthony (one of our Youth Leaders) came in second place overall and first in his age division! After all their hard work, everyone partook in some post-race breakfast tacos and bluebell ice cream while small raffle items were awarded and we waited for the medal ceremony to start.

During the medal ceremony, the first place runner was awarded her prize, a yeti flip cooler. Everyone (especially Rick) was a little envious. What a great prize for first place?! As the medal ceremony continued on, we learned that not only Anthony, but Rick and two more of our Youth Leaders earned medals for their times in their age division! Youth Odyssey was full of winners that day. We were so proud! When all the medals were passed out and everyone had posed for their photo ops, it was time to raffle off the big ticket item! For $1 people could enter to win a Pelican Sport FLOW 106, stand up paddle board. All proceeds from the paddle board raffle went to benefit Youth Odyssey! Funny enough, the mother to one of our Youth Leaders was the winner of the paddle board. She graciously donated the paddle board to Youth Odyssey (Thanks Stephanie)! We can’t wait to work the paddle board into our programming and teach our kids a new skill.

Youth Odyssey king's challenge 5k medal winnersKing's challenge 5k tire run
King's challenge 5k youth leader participants

Five Cheers for 5k Success!

All in all the day was a great success full of perseverance, fundraising and building new partnerships! We really enjoyed working with King’s Crossing Church of Christ and hope to work with them again in the near future. Youth Odyssey is in the process of branching our programs out beyond the school system and housing authorities, and entering into religious organizations as well. Maybe a King’s Crossing after school program will soon be in the mix. Either way, we are very thankful that they chose to help support us with their 5k! It is community partnerships like this that help to continue to make Youth Odyssey successful and grow.