Members of the Shelley Track Club carried towels into practice Tuesday.

Big ol’ towels. Beachies.

Why? More on that in a minute.

It was the youth group’s final get together of the season at Shelley High School, and the woman with the megaphone had big plans for the finale.

That woman, Cassie Huntsman, had javelin, hurdles, sprints and long jump on the schedule.

There was also watermelon, little bags of chips and juice boxes.

In addition, any of the 3- to 7-year-olds with the attention span to make it all the way through the 100-meter dash were rewarded with a little candy at the finish line.

Overall the scene was what the kids call “low key.” Distractions were accepted. Giggles encouraged. Butterfly watching celebrated.

Grade school boys stopped to look at tiny mushrooms hiding in the football field grass.

Little girls sprinted in front of the stands, smiling down at their fancy new running shoes as they went.

All exactly according to plan for coach Huntsman and her staff of volunteer coaches.

“There are a lot of youth sports out there, and most are so serious,” Huntsman said. “I want kids from a young age to not be afraid of running. In a lot of other sports running is a punishment. So when we started this five years ago, I wanted to be — in the tiniest way — an influence for good. To show running is not bad. Is not scary.”

And so they ran. They ran from station to station and event to event.

The younger kids (3 to 7) and older kids (8 to 13) broke into groups. The older kids compete on Thursdays, and the younger kids are strictly having an organized good time.

Tuesday’s hour-long practice started with the hurdles, and then the groups scattered.

Some went south to play in the long jump sand. Others went to the 20-yard line closest to the Shelley Fire Department building, throwing plastic javelins nearly as big as themselves.

The coaches reinforced basic principles, punctuating those directions with a heavy dose of positivity.

“Good. Really good Brin. Now let’s see if we can beat that last one. Ooh, nice Cam. Much better.”

Fourth-grader Brawn Prussia, a blonde-headed flag football star for Shelley, still had stars in his blue eyes after meeting Boise State graduate and Las Vegas Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty one week ago.

Prussia joined the Shelley Track Club in order to further his chances of taking his flag football talents all the way to Jeanty’s National Football League.

“First,” Brawn said, “I need to get faster. I came out here to run, and I hope this will help me with football. I really like the hurdles and the 100 the best. You need to get active.”

Other schools such as Blackfoot and Madison and Rigby have similar youth programs, and those schools have competitions every Thursday. Blackfoot hosts the final club track event of the season this Thursday at 10:30.

The only competition Tuesday was a battle royale between a bunch of happy grade school kids and a firehose.

The final Shelley Track Club meet of the season came to a close when the fire department boys spun up their siren, which had the same effect as kicking an ant hill.

Kids from the sand pit to the 10-yard line shrieked with glee, dropped their plastic javelins and raced to the north end zone.

The firemen brought out the big guns. The valve was thrown and the water began to rocket out of the brass nozzle. The battle was on.

Who was smiling harder? Hard to say. The kids? The coaches? Perhaps.

But it’s going to be tough to beat the size of the smiles on the men in sunglasses throwing that water.

Fifteen minutes later the hose went dry, and the kids went for the watermelon.

Watermelon and those giant beachies.

Those track towels they carried into practice Tuesday.