 | | | Runners at the St. Mary's Invitational Photo provided | | | | | | St. Mary's Head Coach Marty Kinsey and his assistant coach Marc Kaiser were looking for a way to showcase their cross-country program, and to market the college. They produced a way to kill two birds with one stone by having the first annual St. Mary's Cross Country Invitational on the campus.
"Marc and I thought that an event like this would be a great way to show off the school by getting the athletes, their family, and friends to come out for the event," Kinsey said. "The bigger picture was getting 750 kids to St. Mary's to compete, not all of whom are going to run in college, and they can see how nice the campus is and would be a good way for St. Mary's to attract more students."
With the event at St. Mary's, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) required that a college cannot solely host a cross-country race for CIF teams and had to partner with a high school. "It was then that we reached out to Concord High School's cross-country coach Lynette Stanziano (whose daughter Rayna ran cross-country and runs track for St. Mary's)," Kinsey said. "Lynette did a great deal of work in organizing, getting in touch with coaches and helping to set up what proved to be quite the spectacle, which brought about 1,500 people on to the campus for the event."
Kinsey had anticipated ten teams and running four races but ended up with 23 teams and five races comprised of frosh-soph boys, frosh-soph girls, varsity boys, and varsity girls. "With so many entries, we added a fifth race for the overflow of frosh-soph boys and even that was a little crowded. None of the Lamorinda teams competed in the event. "Campolindo has a pretty strict schedule, but Miramonte and Acalanes are good candidates to compete in our future events," Kinsey said.
The race was two miles long and went along the St. Mary's rugby front fields, which parallel St Mary's Road and goes down a gravel hill into a fire trail, and then on back to the fields. Thankfully, the weather cooperated with a cooler than usual day.
The bulk of the St. Mary's women's team and members of the men's team volunteered to help run the event and Hubert Higueros, one of St. Mary's athletic trainers, was also present for any medical conditions that could have arisen. "We provided water and snacks for the runners at the end of the race, and we had a concession tent that we hosted as far as snacks, Gatorade and even t-shirts for sale," Kinsey said.
Kinsey made it a point to meet with all of the head coaches after the race to thank them, and asked for feedback to make the races even better for the second annual race. "In the end we were really encouraged, and the feedback that we got was all constructive and definitely things that we can implement to make the event more smooth ," Kinsey said. "We will groom the course a bit and may add a community race, saying to Lamorinda: `Bring your family and kids and we can have five and ten K races.'"
"I couldn't have hoped for a better first event," Kinsey concluded. |
Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA