Selection Surprises Artist Lincoln Heights’ Kristen Bolser Wins Fit For Bloomsday Poster Contest

The children knew there was a winner among them, but they didn’t know who it was.

A picture drawn by one of the students at Lincoln Heights Elementary School was selected from more than 30 entries to be a poster for Fit For Bloomsday, a program aimed at training children how to run the world’s largest timed road race.

During the next 10 weeks, coaches in Spokane’s area schools will be training 4,000 to 5,000 students how to run the 7.46-mile course, which attracts roughly 60,000 entrants.

On Tuesday morning, before hundreds of the school’s students, Bloomsday board member Tom Jones held up a poster of the winning entry and beckoned the artist to come forward and accept a boxload of prizes.

But no one raised a hand. No one came forward. The crowd of children stirred, craning their heads looking for the winner.

“Does anyone think this is yours?” Jones asked.

Everyone wondered, everyone but Jim Bolser. The reporter from KXLY-TV trained his camera on a 10-year-old girl in a jean jacket. Bolser knew who the winner was before the winner did.

It was his daughter.

“And people say reporters can’t keep secrets,” he said.

Kristen Bolser finally raised her hand and went up to claim her prizes.

“It didn’t look like it,” said Kristen, explaining her delay.

Kristen’s version had lots of green. Transferred to a wall-size poster, the image is now in purple.

Her colored drawing is of her parents, Jim and Nancy, her big brother, TJ, and herself in the Bloomsday race. They are smiling and have very skinny legs.

“Shocked, surprised,” is all Kristen had to say about her win. The inspiration for the picture “just sort of popped into my head,” she said.

For her artistic talent, Bolser was awarded prizes from the Dairy Farmers of Washington, co-sponsors of the Fit For Bloomsday program.

There was a dairy hat, T-shirt, a black-and-white dairy cow bag, cow shoelaces and a black-and-white stuffed toy cow - a creature that made all the kids coo when they saw it.

But Kristen received applause when Jones announced that all the kids in the Fit For Bloomsday program at Lincoln Heights - about 30 - would get a special prize because of her drawing: a free pizza party.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo