Husky News

Kalifornsky Beach Elementary School has gone to the dogs, in a creative way.

Students turned the annual Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race poster contest into a schoolwide project, with first, second and third prizes all being awarded to Kalifornsky Beach students.

The contest garnered more than 100 entries from first- through sixth-graders at six or seven area schools, said Rocky Laster, a poster contest organizer.

“The top three were all from K-Beach Elementary. K-Beach had by far most entries,” he said.

Above is the first place winners drawing for the 2008 Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race poster contest. The scene depicts a sled dog team crossing the finish line. The drawing is the official promotional poster. Kendra’s artwork will appear on the official race programs and will be framed and presented to the first place finisher in the race.
Art by Kendra Bass/ Kalifornsky

The school already is sled dog friendly, having local musher Colleen Robertia as an employee and relatives of 2007 Iditarod winner Lance Mackey as alumni. On top of that, Principal Melissa Stavola added an extra incentive for the poster contest every student submitting an entry would be put in a raffle for a sled dog ride at her home in Kasilof.

Prizes in the poster contest went to fifth-graders Zoe Zorn and Kendra Bass, and sixth-grader Serena Prior. Kendra, as the first-place winner, gets a pizza party for her class courtesy of Rocky’s Cafe at the Kasilof Mercantile, owned by Laster and his family. Her drawing of a sled dog team crossing the finish line is the official promotional poster of this year’s race.

Rocky’s Cafe also awarded a gift certificate for two pizzas to Serena, in second place, and a gift certificate for a free meal to Zoe, for third place, during an assembly Jan. 18 at the school. A humanitarian award winner and one contestant from each of the other schools submitting entries win a free meal at the mercantile, as well.

The K-Beach poster winners said they entered the contest in part because it was a school project, but also because they like art and wanted to do a good job on the posters.

Kendra’s winning poster has a team crossing finish line with a veterinarian behind them. Serena’s shows a musher looking through the eyes of a dog team, “because you have to see into a dog’s eyes to know where to go,” she said. Zoe focused on animals in her drawing of a scene at the finish line.

“I like drawing animals instead of people, so I only had one person in mine,” she said.

Quality and content were what poster judges from the T-200 race board were looking for in the entries.

“Artistic merit. Something that kind of exemplified good dog care and embodied the spirit of the race,” Laster said.

Though he wasn’t a judge, the mercantile was one of the drop-off places for the posters, so he and his family got to see about 75 of them.

“The three top winners were the three that we thought were the best, too,” he said. “… I think it was really, really good for sixth-graders, better than I could have done.”

The poster contest is a precursor to the T-200 race, which starts Saturday. The race is part of the Peninsula Winter Games, a two-week festival of winter-themed fun that started Jan. 19.

Soldotna Mayor Dave Carey was at the school assembly to drum up interest for the games among the school’s kids. Students didn’t need much incentive to be excited about the prospects of ice bowling, face painting and a “Monopoly” tournament, but Snowball the Peninsula Winter Games mascot stopped by, just in case.

Source: Peninsula Clarion