Friday, March 29, 2024
 About 29 Kasson Mantorville Elementary School students are currently signed up for the newly formed running club.

Running club comes to Kasson

In January of 2016, K-M alum Brian Hunn began working at Kasson-Mantorville Elementary School as a paraprofessional.

Ever since then, Hunn has had the idea of one day creating a running club. Now that idea has become a reality, as the KoMet Running Club is in full swing.

Hunn, an avid runner, explained that he first came up with the idea when he was at an event during the Med CIty Marathon called the kids marathon. Students run at least 25 miles over the course of the spring, and then finish their marathon by running the final 1.2 miles the day before the Med City Marathon for a total of 26.2 miles.

At the moment, Hunn thought to himself why not have something like that in Kasson.

“There are hundreds of students that participate from the area, and I noticed many of them had shirts representing school running clubs. I thought how awesome that would be to bring back to KMES,” Hunn said.

During the winter, Hunn received an email from Community Education asking if he would be interested in starting a running camp during the spring or summer, and he jumped on the opportunity.

With a basic idea in mind, Hunn began contacting the appropriate people to get the track scheduled before school, and to get t-shirts made for the program. Hunn also created a description of the program to be featured in the Community Ed catalog.

Hunn explained that there are many benefits for children who run. Healthwise, it strengthens bones, makes the heart stronger, makes the lungs stronger, improves energy levels, and makes people feel better emotionally. It also helps build endurance, helps kids improve in other sports, and gets them away from sedentary activities like watching television or playing video games,” Hunn said.

As of now, 29 students are registered and about 20-25 students show up each day, which Hunn calls a pretty good success so far. Hunn explained that parents are also encouraged to run with their children if they would like and almost every day at least one parent comes and runs with their child. The ultimate goal of the program is to keep kids moving and some kids run, some walk and most of the kids do a combination of the two. The goal each day is complete one mile and many of the students do more than that.

Currently, the program is open to second-fourth graders, as he wanted to see how it would work with a smaller group first, but Hunn is already thinking about how it can expanded next year to fifth and sixth graders, and is very excited about the possibilities for what the program can become.

For those who are interested in having their students attend, the club meets each morning at 7 a.m. at the K-M track.  

 

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