After a successful inaugural season this past spring, the Run Your City Amherst-UMass program is making its return.
Starting on Sunday, Aug. 30, local children in grades K-8 will be able to participate in a six-week running program designed to introduce the sport to kids through activities led by UMass student-athletes.
Run Your City is a nationwide nonprofit with 107 chapters around the country that was founded in 2018. The program is free for all who participate.
Ryley Shunney, co-president of the UMass chapter, is excited for the fall session following a spring session that saw nearly 300 children attend.
“I think the community was really welcoming of us,” Shunney said. “We tried really hard with outreach and we ended up getting 280 participants signed up by the end of the spring season. The kids were such a joy to be around. The families were really excited for us and helped spread the word a lot. I think we couldn’t have asked for a better first season.”
Because the program welcomes kids aged 3-12, activities range from simple games like duck-duck-goose to learning the basic events of track and field, such as the 200-meter dash.
For the upcoming fall session, Shunney highlighted a couple of additional activities expected to be implemented.
“This year we’re doing a “Minuteman Mile,” a mile event just to introduce the more distance-based side of track and field,” Shunney said. “Also we’ve been fundraising throughout the whole summer, we’ve bought some new equipment so we can introduce more of the throwing events.”
While much of the spring session featured basic games, Shunney believed many kids enjoyed their experience from the first to the last week.
“I definitely think that we were getting the responses that we were looking for from the kids,” Shunney said. “They would come back the next day and asking us to do specific stuff, so I feel like that was a pretty good sign that we were hitting the right notes and they were liking what we were doing.”
Shunney also emphasized the program is not about developing the next wave of Olympic stars, rather it’s more focused on allowing kids to have fun.
“We’re building a community around track and field and using that as a resource to bring everybody together,” Shunney said.
Shunney is one of the nine UMass student-athletes on its leadership team, who all serve as volunteers for the program. A rising senior, Shunney felt compelled to join the Run Your City program due to its overall values, plus her lifelong connection with sports.
“Sports and being a part of a team, in general, has been a foundation of who I am as a person and how I’ve grown and I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of the traits that make me who I am today, through sports,” Shunney said. “We see this obstacle of youth sports being a business transaction and it’s thousands of dollars for kids to participate, and we just don’t want to see that be the reason why kids can’t be part of a team. I think that hits us so deep because sports have been such big parts of our lives and we just want to see everyone have access to that.”
Shunney also expressed the sense of fulfillment she’s felt since joining the UMass chapter’s leadership team.
“I think that it’s been a really good outlet for a lot of kids,” Shunney said. “It’s been really rewarding to see over a six-week period, how much being part of a team and that culture can do for a kid.”
The first event on Aug. 30 will take place at the UMass track and will go from 1-2 p.m. To sign up, visit www.runyourcity.org/chapters/run-amherst-umass.
