Brown brings message and medal to Scarborough Village Public School.
Olympic bobsledding silver medalist Shelley-Ann Brown waves goodbye to students at Scarborough Village Public School after her visit to the school Friday afternoon.
Staff photo/NICK PERRY
Silver medalist Shelley-Ann Brown could feel the love when she returned home to Scarborough Village Public School.
The current students welcomed Brown on Friday, March 12, when she returned to the school for an assembly with the silver medal she won in the bobsled at last month's 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
"This is my school," Brown said in an interview after the assembly.
"I definitely felt the love. This feels like home to me. I cried when I had leave in Grade 5."
Brown's family moved to Pickering, but she said she never forgot her elementary school in Scarborough.
She selected the school as part of the Olympic adopt-an-athlete program, which pairs schools with Olympic athletes to aid in fundraising with the money going directly to the athlete.
Through fundraisers including the sale of water bottles, popcorn and a bake sale, the Scarborough Village students raised $1,000 and presented it to Brown at the assembly.
She visited the school in December and promised to be back - this time with her silver medal around her neck.
"I loved being at the Olympics," Brown told the students at the assembly. "It was the best time of my entire life. You guys were all a special part of it. I thought of you guys all the time. There was a bit of you guys in the sled with me."
She told the students about her medal-winning run with teammate Helen Upperton and how her heart was beating so fast and how she took a deep breath and ran and pushed as hard and as fast as she could.
"And this is what happened," she said and held up her medal as the students cheered.
Brown told the group of students when she was a student at Scarborough Village she dreamed of going to the Olympics.
"I used to run races at recess," she said. "Guess who was the fastest?"
She smiled and pointed to herself. The students cheered.
Brown told the students she had a hard season training for the Winter Olympics.
"My teammate got injured and we were worried we weren't going to be fast enough," she said.
About a month before the Olympics Brown and her teammate were feeling down, she said so they decided to focus on pushing hard, driving well and feeling lots of joy.
While in Vancouver, Brown said she concentrated on those three things.
"I really, really, really wanted to be on the podium," she said. "When I held my medal on the podium I was so happy."
During the assembly a former teacher of Brown's talked with the students.
Kathy Milligan taught Brown in grades 4 and 5.
"When Shelley-Ann was here she was great athlete," Milligan said,
She told the story about how Brown and her best friend were running at a cross country meet and one of the girls had to stop to tie her shoe lace. The other stopped too and waited.
"They ended up crossing the finish line together hand-in-hand," she said. "That tells you the kind of girl Shelley-Ann is."