Crescent Point hosted a BBQ on Thursday, May 17, for the participating students and families of Classroom Champions.
Classroom Champions focuses on using national team level athletes as mentors. Students are able to interact with national level athletes and are then given challenges to do regarding various lessons their mentor speaks about.
Carlyle Elementary School welcomed Barret Martineau, a three-time World Champion and Olympic athlete in skeleton.
“This is my second year with the program,” Martineau explained. “My two teammates, Tristan Walker and Justin Snith, have been involved and Tristan has been my bestfriend for a long time. So, I was introduced to the program through them. I wanted to be involved in it and I was recently sponsored by Crescent Point, which works with the program, which worked out really well.”
“I liked the idea of being a mentor and being able to tell my stories to children.”
Martineau has long been an elite level athlete having been an alternative ski jumper for the 2010 Olympics before becoming interested in Skeleton.
“After the 2010 Olympics, skeleton was just electric in Canada and I was really interested in trying it. There’s a lot of aspects that are similar between ski jumping and skeleton: intensity, focus, and exhilaration. They’re both speed and power based sports. So, I knew I had the core concepts to excel as a skeleton athlete.”
Crescent Point’s Jodi Third welcomed the classes that participated in Classroom Champions as well as their families.
“Thank you everyone for coming out and thank you Classroom Champions for being here with us,” Third said. “People are a priority for us. We’ve given back $30 million to the communities we [Crescent Point] live and operate in. We value education and sports, so Classroom Champions was a natural fit for us. We were already sponsoring athletes already and this program now sets up the leaders of our future.”
The mentorship focused on addressing long and short term goals; always doing your best; exploring diversity and how everyone is unique; the communities we belong to; perseverance; courage; and healthy living. The students were also excited to be able to watch Martineau compete at the Olympics; cheering for him as he took to compete from their classrooms.
Martineau shared with the youth, “I was at the Olympics, freaking out, I was days away from competing and it didn’t matter if I sat on the couch or went out and bench pressed all day. There was nothing else I could do to prepare. So, I went onto Google Plus and I saw everyone cheering me on. The lessons of courage and perseverance you all retaught to me while I was at the Olympics. All of you kids were in my heart and I was just enjoying the moment.”
“You guys are all the champions. Thank you for being a part of my story and go out and tell your story.”
