By Kimberly Mason

For The Chronicle

TOLEDO Physical Education teacher for Toledo High School, Don Schaplow, guarded the wire-topped trough filled with rentable racing frogs at the Cheese Days frog jumping contest held Friday night at the Toledo High School track.

Do you guys release again the frogs after they race? a member of the crowd asked as the kids pressed forward to choose their frog for the next race, hoping its a winner.

Nope. We eat em, Schaplow grinned. I hear theyre pretty tasty.

But Schaplow was just pulling their frog legs, so to speak or so he said.

Jason Goble, 8, Adna, sat at the registration table keeping up with the top scores from the score of races that had already run in just an hours time. He had a vested interest in keeping up with the action, his frog, Bulls-eye, had jumped a whopping 56 feet.

I called him Bulls-eye cuz he was right on target, Goble said.

Last years winner had bounded a mere 40 feet, a minor feat compared to the yardage his Bulls-eye had covered. Goble had his eye on the top prize.

Thirteen frogs were captured from the lily pads of Silver Lake just for this event. For one small dollar kids and big kids were given a race number and a frog to borrow.

The techniques used to get the frogs moving varied from staring at the lazy green sloth of a frog to, the most effective, blowing great gusts of air from behind while beating the grass to side and hollering encouragement.

Denny Clark, former Toledo High School principal for 27 years, said that he and some of the coaches from Toledo High School started the frog jumping contest almost 30 years ago.

Its a great activity to kick off the Cheese Days events, Clark said. It gets bigger every year. Its one of the few activities thats just for the kids . . . well, and the big kids.