In Philadelphia Schools, Students and Teachers Log Miles Together – runnersworld.com
In Philadelphia Schools, Students and Teachers Log Miles Together runnersworld.com
Students Run Philly Style has been showing young people their true potential through running and mentorship since 2004.
Tutee Kpou had senioritis. On a crisp Saturday morning in late April, the 19-year-old from West Catholic Preparatory High School showed up to the longest run of his life wearing a green cotton T-shirt from Moe’s Southwest Grill and a tattered pair of red New Balance sneakers. Kpou’s attitude toward this run, during which he’d attempt to keep up with friends and mentors with thousands more miles on their legs than him, was optimistically apathetic.
“I missed an eight-mile practice last Saturday. This happened before, too,” Kpou says, commiserating off the back of the pack. He ran past the Philadelphia Zoo, three miles into the day’s nine-mile workout for next week’s Broad Street Run, a 10-miler. The skinny Kpou has a shoulder-swinging, knock-kneed gait, but he’s got the natural bounce of untapped potential. “I missed the five-mile practice and had to go straight from four to six. Ah geez, man. I was hurting.”
This was his first season back to running after he joined the movement known as Students Run Philly Style (SRPS), a mentorship program that gets students from 12 to 18 years old training for races in Philadelphia. Kpou ran track in middle school but wasn’t very fast because he didn’t show up to practice. “It really do be like that sometimes,” Kpou says. “I might hurt worse today. I had never run with these guys. Never. I was the last one, always out of breath, always sitting down. But now that I work on it, I’m much better. But it still takes a lot of effort to keep up with these guys.”
The group he’s chasing is chipper. Malachi Shell, a 25-year-old adult mentor who ran with the group during their days at West Catholic, leads the boisterous group as they turn into the wind on West Girard Avenue. Shell ribs Huntington Brown, a 17-year-old Mastery Charter School Shoemaker Campus student runner, over his purple do-rag. It’s Brown’s favorite accessory; it makes him run faster, they conclude. Kpou catches up and the group pushes to gain ground on Audrey Russell and her twin daughters Nia and Imani Mitchell, both freshmen at Mastery Lenfest Campus, but the Jamaican family blows by the six-mile water stop.
This is group of 20—a mix of adults, parents, teachers, and the students—pushes one another via the simple fact that on a nine-mile run, there’s nothing to do but talk. This is Students Run Philly Style.
Drive around Philadelphia on a Saturday morning and you’ll see dozens of similar tribes, many wearing the signature Students Run T-shirts and hoodies.
Runner and public health advocate Heather McDanel founded the organization in 2004, modeling it after Los Angeles’ Students Run L.A. program, with the initial goal of preventing childhood obesity. It’s evolved to show young people their true potential through running and mentorship. Around 1,200 middle school and high school students train alongside mentors within 59 teams, running together a few times a week and preparing for races like the Broad Street Run and the Philadelphia Marathon.
[Want to start running? The Big Book of Running for Beginners will take you through everything you need to know to get started, step by step.]
Hannah Yoon
A two-year impact study of the program by Temple University and Drexel University boasts impressive results: 41 percent of participating students increased their GPA while 99.5 percent made it to the next grade level. With weekend and after-school practices, SRPS also keeps teens out of trouble: The study saw a 50 percent decrease in SRPS students’ violent behavior. An overwhelming majority of kids felt their self-confidence increase because of the program, and of the 91 percent of high school seniors who graduated high school, 90 percent of those students were accepted into four-year colleges.
Running alone doesn’t account for the program’s continued success; you could argue that students like Kpou, who keeps showing up because there’s not much to do at home, could’ve just joined their high school’s track team. But not everyone responds well to a coach barking splits from a stopwatch.
Mentors like Jill Morris are equals, not superiors. “You hear me moaning up every hill, saying ‘Lord, have mercy,’” Morris, 43, says as the group labors up the sidewalk near Upper Darby High School, where she works as a guidance counselor. “The kids are like ‘Oh, here’s an adult doing the same thing I’m doing and that’s not easy for them.’”
SRPS sees teens from families of all types of privilege; it’s not just lower-income households who have kids in need of guidance. But compared to her day job, which entails hands-on work with her school’s at-risk students, Morris says she’s constantly surprised by how easy it is to impact the program’s student runners. At a leadership training, one student-turned-mentor told Morris, “I was just so excited that these adults kept showing up in my life!” And Morris thought, “That’s all I have to do? That’s the easiest thing I can ever do. When you’re running, what else are you going to do for 15 or 18 miles?”
David Castellanos, a senior at Academy at Palumbo, ran last year’s Philadelphia Marathon with mentor and computer science teacher Erik Wiessmann. Castellanos says he’s not someone who comes out with his emotions to just anyone.
“But during the marathon, when it had to, it just came out,” Castellanos says. “Not only because of the physical pain, but the emotional pain I felt (because) of why I was running the marathon.” His older sister had passed away, and he was running the race for her.
“I just said it out loud that I can’t give up. That I have to finish this race for my sister,” Castellanos says. “I know I was just screaming at Wiessmann. I didn’t feel embarrassed because I trust him enough.”
Hannah Yoon
Some mentors have grown the program themselves from the inside out: Audrey Russell began volunteering with SRPS because she wanted to join her daughters’ group at Mastery Charter Lenfest Campus. The 49-year-old wasn’t a runner until then, but once she discovered the confidence running gave her, Russell started a running group at her church, Southwest Seventh-Day Adventist. She’s recruited 11 active runners, from a fifth-grader to Sister Juanita, who is 60. For her 50th birthday, she wants to run the Philadelphia Marathon, her first time at the distance.
“Wouldn’t it be a grand occasion?” she says. “Fifty years old, and I run a marathon.”
Kpou will attend Community College of Philadelphia while he finds his way in the growing world of live video game entertainment. He wants to become a Twitch streamer, sharing his screen with viewers around the globe. “I’m not much of a gamer, I’m more of a ‘just chatter’ guy, talking about anything,” he says. “I hope my personality is enough, because I suck at video games. Honestly.”
Audrey Russell and her daughters finished well ahead of the pack, waiting in the parking lot of West Catholic. As the hard-charging group lead by Malachy and Huntington came into view, Kpou loped alongside. A sprint finish ensued; smiles and laughter followed.
Hannah Yoon
Hannah Yoon
A New Balance shoebox laid at Kpou’s feet as he cheered on the other runners finishing their nine miles. The program gave him a bright blue pair of Zante Pursuit trainers for the race, an earned reward for putting in the training. He munched on a pack of Welch’s fruit snacks and smiled.
“I got Broad Street—that was great,” he says. “The only thing that sucks is it’s right after my senior ditch day. I get one day of rest and one day of full work.”