Even on an off weekend, ISU football players Seneca Wallace, Lane Danielsen, Michael Wagner, Todd Miller and Kyle Knock could be found at the Lied Recreation Center.

However, Wallace wasn’t passing or handing off the football to his teammates. Instead, 12 Ames-area fifth graders were the recipients.

The roles were reversed at the first annual Cyclone Olympics as 12 lucky youngsters were being cheered on by the same athletes that they normally cheer for.

Football players weren’t the only athletes there.

Most of the ISU athletic teams were represented and each athlete helped at various stations.

In all, the Olympics consisted of 12 events, including the long jump, basketball shooting, golf putting and spinning around a softball bat seven times and then running to hit a ball off a tee.

Another event, the football obstacle course, ended with each participant receiving a handoff from Wallace and jumping onto a high-jump mat for the touchdown.

“The football event was huge. Seneca gets called on to do a lot of things and for him to come in this morning and do this for us just impacted the kids,” ISU student-athlete counselor Jeff Cesler said. “I’d like to have Seneca give me the handoff and [I would] jump onto the mat too. That will be something the kids will remember for a long time.”

Cesler, who was in charge of planning and coordinating the event, was happy with the way the day played out, especially after a turnout that was smaller than expected.

“I was really pleased with how things went today,” Cesler said. “We were expecting quite a few more students, so we had to make some format adjustments.

“It still worked out great, though. By having this little number of participants, each was able to get more attention and feel more special.”

Participant Stephanie Holtman said her favorite event was the football obstacle course.

“It was really cool to get a handoff from Seneca,” Holtman said.

She also said she enjoyed every event and would do it again if she could.

She said she even liked the wrestling station, which seemed more like a boot camp than an obstacle course.

It consisted of jumping rope 25 times, knee walking, 10 push-ups, a bear crawl, 10 sit-ups, somersaults, 10 jumping jacks and a dash to tackle a foam pad.

Another popular event was the swimming station.

Participants made their way over to the Forker swimming pool where they threw balls through hoops and tried to hit a moving member of the swim team with a foam football.

In the end, all the participants were winners.

“You are all great athletes and are all champions,” Cesler said to the participants.

Each was given a T-shirt and a certificate for taking part in the first Cyclone Olympics.