On Oct. 26, four MSHS students participated in and won the Manitou Springs annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races. The four students, Fenn Loftin (12), Logan Moore (12), Preston Rhodes (12), and Ethan Traenkle (12), participated through the school’s Key Club. Kiwanis, which is a part of a global network of clubs and members who partner with each other and with organizations, is what made it possible for the students to participate through the MSHS Key Club.

Last year, Kiwanis built a coffin for the Manitou Coffin Races and asked the MSHS Key Club for volunteers. There were only three volunteers last year because students had to be 18 to participate, but they were able to place 9th in the race. Kiwanis wanted to participate again this year with the coffin they had already, and they were able to find the total four students to volunteer around mid September. Fenn Loftin, one of the volunteers had previously already been planning on participating with family, but ultimately participated through the school.

“I wanted to do it already with my family,” Loftin said. “We were planning on trying to make a coffin this year and doing it, but never got around to it. So I was like, sure, that would be fun.”

After the participants had been found, there was very little preparation needed for the races. All that was needed was for the costumes to be picked and for the coffin to be checked. Mary Stapleton, a member of Kiwanis and the participant in the coffin, found the costumes and made sure they fit the students. Their costumes were the guards from “Alice in Wonderland”.

“People would filter by, and they would talk about it. They all recognized our team based off their costumes, and they thought the costumes were some of the best costumes,” Mike Talbott, MSHS teacher and Key Club adviser, said. “They weren’t real Halloweenish, or scary, like some people are dressed as zombies and mummies and stuff like that.”

On the day of the Coffin Races, the students met up in Manitou at around nine thirty. They got their coffin safety checked, received their numbers, attended safety meetings, and headed down to their spot with the other contestants while they waited for the parade to begin. 

“We got free Celsius, snacks and stuff from the people at the festival. And just waited there for a while,” Loftin said. “And then there was a safety meeting where one person from each team had to go over all the rules, which we already knew. You had to have three people touching the cart at all times, and then you couldn’t pass over the middle line.”

The length of the race was 195 yards, and the students’ team raced 33rd. Two teams would race at a time, however the winner of the Coffin Races is determined by the measured amount of time it takes to finish the race. The student’s time with costumes on was 27.7 seconds, which was about 14 miles per hour.

“We were just all a bit nervous because we hadn’t even run the coffin before or tested it. We just kind of all went into four spots on the coffin and were ready to go,” Loftin said. “We just started pushing pretty much full force as hard as we could, because we decided before that it wasn’t that long and we wouldn’t have to pace ourselves. So we just decided to go full force the whole time.”

The students were in first place after their race, until the “Troublemakers” tied with them at 27.7 seconds. In order to break the tie, the two teams would have to race against each other.

“ I didn’t want to race,” Lofitn said. “We thought that was it. We were all dead.”

When the two teams were supposed to race to find a winner, the “Troublemakers” never showed up. This meant that the MSHS students were the winners by default. The students then went on to race the winners of the Frozen Dead Guy Races from Estes Park. The students won this race as well with a time of 26.9 seconds.

“It was just awesome,” said Loftin. “We didn’t expect to get first.”

Talbott says that participating in and winning the Coffin Races is a great thing for MSHS students to say they have done.

“If you’re from Manitou, and you think, what are the things you would want to win that are Manitou things? This would be one of them,” Talbott said. “The marathon and the fruit cake throwing contest might be other ones, but those are things that are unique to Manitou. These four young men have won, and they can always say that no matter if they stay here for the rest of their life, or they move away. They still can come back and go, I was a champion.”

Rhodes, one of the participants, says that this was a great way for students to get involved in the community.