MIDDLEBORO — The Summer Olympics had just wrapped up, but the spirit of competition lingered in Middleboro. Last week, the town staged it’s own Summer Olympics, as it has done for more than 70 years. 

The decades-old tradition this year featured races in swimming, track and field, obstacle courses as well as a punt, pass and kick football competition, said Summer Program Director Dylan Smith. 

The games ran Monday, Aug. 12 through Friday, Aug. 16. 

For Lily Carney, who participated in this year’s event, the best competition is the “mini mile,” one of the running events held on Battis Field. 

Carney won her race in the obstacle course event, in which kids competed in pairs. The race featured a ladder that children had to climb and jump off of. 

Though Carney admitted the ladder made her a bit nervous, she told herself: “I can do it, and then I just jumped off and I won the race,” she stated.  

Henry Healy said what he loves most about the Middleboro Summer Olympics is “getting ribbons,” which are given to the top finishers in each race. 

When Healy gets tired or makes a mistake during a competition, he tells himself to “just try doing it again and again and again and again.”

The Middleboro Summer Olympics gives kids like PJ Needle an outlet for their competitive nature. “I like winning,” said Needle.

Smith said above all what he hopes the experience of participating in the town’s Olympics gives kids is “memories.” 

“Memories are one of the key things we want people to take away from this. We have kids that used to go to this camp and now they work here,” said Smith. 

The memories kids make during the Middleboro Summer Olympics is a big part of why the tradition has continued for so long, according to Smith. “At this point, it’s just a phenomenon. It’s just something that we always do.”

He added that sportsmanship is something else he hopes kids take away from the games. 

Holding the town’s version of the Summer Olympics on the tails of the international competition “hypes it up more” he noted.