The opening ceremonies for the 53rd annual Area M Track & Field Games featured athletes from Dauphin, Cumberland, Perry and York counties.<\/p>\n
HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Over 500 high school athletes participated in the opening ceremonies for the 53rd annual Special Olympics Area M Games today in Harrisburg.<\/p>\n
The Area M Games features athletes from Dauphin, Cumberland, Perry and York counties who have intellectual disabilities. Events include running, wheelchair races, as well as throwing and jumping.<\/p>\n
Event organizers say this event means more than just crossing the finish line first.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is cheering them on, from when they\u2019re running in their race to then when they receive their awards,” said Laura Backhaus with Special Olympics PA. “Sometimes the athlete that comes in last place gets the biggest round of applause and encouragement to cross over the finish line.”<\/p>\n
Today’s regional event is the first step before athletes can compete in statewide and national competitions. More than 100 adult athletes will compete on Saturday, May 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening ceremonies for the 53rd annual Area M Track & Field Games featured athletes from Dauphin, Cumberland,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-175222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}