They Ran for Asa Burton
October 15, 2018
By Charlie Buttrey
We made history!!
As part of Thetford Academy’s year-long bicentennial celebration, close to 70 runners and walkers were at the starting line when the blast of an 1820’s-style muzzle loader shattered the morning stillness and sent them on their way to compete in the Asa Burton Bicentennial Blitz 5K race. This was a race with a twist.
As the competitors traversed the Daniel Grossman Woods Trail on the TA campus, they passed more than two dozen signs containing various TA-related historical facts. After they finished, the runners were then quizzed on their retention of the facts, and their final times were adjusted based on their performance on the quiz, with correct answers resulting in faster times, and incorrect answers resulting in slower times.
The winner in both the overall category and the girls middle-school category was not the fastest runner in that category, but made up for lost time with a stellar performance on the quiz!
Those who missed the race may not know that Admiral Byrd visited TA in 1930, or that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt contributed $100 to the school’s rebuilding effort after the catastrophic 1942 fire, or that basketball came to TA before electric lights.