Preparing food for 1000 athletes and coaches is a big undertaking, but that's just what the Chef at Steinbach Regional Secondary School in Steinbach has done.

We are half way through the 2016 Power Smart Manitoba Summer Games, and the athletes participating in phase two have arrived. The athletes heading home from phase one, traveling an hour or more were sent off with a lunch that included a sub sandwich.

Chef Coombs says he was uncertain that the task of making nearly 400 sandwiches would be completed in the four-hour volunteer shift Tuesday evening. “When I looked at the volunteer list in the morning there were less than 10 signed up, but more than 20 showed up to help out.”

The sandwiches were completed in just an hour and a half. Coombs says the week leading up to the Summer Games, he was a little worried by the lack of volunteers that had signed up.

“The Volunteer numbers were actually scary that we had so few, but the Coordinators have done a great job rounding up volunteers. The volunteers we have are absolutely amazing and they work hard. Some of them are here from 5:30 in the morning until nine at night, so it's really good.”

Getting the food in has been a bit of a problem because a donated 53 ft. reefer trailer didn't have enough room to hold all the food required for the first half of the week. “The trailer was packed full of food right to the rafters and I couldn't even get in there. If we were in Winnipeg we could get daily deliveries but being out of town we got the food in two deliveries.”

Coombs notes, the days are long days but it's rewarding, “I'm looking forward to some rest, I get in at 4 am and I don't leave here until 10:30 pm. At the end of the games, I'm going to look back and think it was good, but some days leading up to the games I thought I must be crazy.”

Coombs says so far he's only heard positive feedback about the food served. Two athletes from the Eastman Region say they are very happy with the food, especially the pasta, and the chicken fingers with fries were a highlight. Keegan Beer and Seunggu Kang say the food is healthier than what they might eat if they were at home, given a choice, and they are okay with that.