By Taylor Nigrelli
Sports Editor
Club sports teams exist as a way for former high-school athletes to continue to compete in the sports they love without the time constraints of a varsity sport.
This couldn’t be further from the mission of St. Bonaventure’s running club. This co-ed club is made up of a dozen members of varying abilities who share the common interest of running in a group.
According to the team’s page on the school’s club sports website, the club is open to anyone who enjoys running and is looking for people to run with. The relatively new club was started last school year by Jake Witter, ‘13 with the idea of bringing a group of people who enjoy running, but not necessarily competing, together.
“A lot of us couldn’t, or didn’t want to, run for the cross country team,” junior member Dominique DeGregorio said. “So (Jake) started a club for those who weren’t fast enough for cross country or just didn’t want to (run).”
The team trains together but is without a coach. Instead, the members run as often and as far as they please.
“We have a wide range of runners,” junior and founding member Andrew Belfield said. “We have some people who are interested in competing and some people who are not so interested in competing. We’ve been trying to think of what the best way to accommodate everyone’s needs is.”
Belfield said he plans to split the team into sub-divisions for practice based on individual’s abilities.
“We might have a group of runners who want a more intense run and a group of runners who want a more casual run,” Belfield said. “I’ve also been thinking of doing a loop with shorter mileage and dropping off some people at the Richter Center halfway through and then having some others continue.”
The team is the youngest of the club sports at just over a year old. Despite it still being in the early goings, Belfield and DeGregorio can already see the benefits.
“I think we’ve gotten people who might not otherwise run, to run,” Belfield said. “We have people who ran in high school and have a lot of experience running. But then we have some others who came to college and just wanted to run to stay in shape. It’s also a great place to meet people with similar interests and make friendships.”
Although the team is listed as co-ed on its website, the men and women compete in separate races. The team competes in a handful of meets every year through the National Intercollegiate Running Club Association (NIRCA). This year, they are scheduled to compete in four meets between Sept. 22 and Nov. 10 beginning with the Parent Weekend 5k on the St. Bonaventure campus and ending in Hershey, Pa. at the NIRCA National Championship.
Belfield said he saw tangible improvement in many of the runners over the course of last season but has some non-race related goals for this year.
“As the captain of the team, my goals are to increase membership and provide a fun environment,” Belfield said. “I think if we can get people to have fun and stay in shape that would be a successful year.”
nigreltn11@bonaventure.edu
