Summer Running Club An ‘Opportunity To Maintain Continuity’

SOUTH YARMOUTH – It takes serious dedication for a teenager to wake up every weekday summer morning to get to the track by 7:30 a.m. for practice.

That’s exactly the type of passion for track and field that Riptide Running Cape Cod looks for. The group, now in its eighth year, looks for “kids who really want to run,” co-founder Kim Crowell said. 

The program, open to kids 12 and up, serves as a summer running group for athletes on the Cape who otherwise probably wouldn’t run as much between the school years. The club meets four mornings a week at the track at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School and once a week for a run at a trail somewhere on the Cape.

Overall, Riptide Running offers “an opportunity to maintain continuity over the summer,” according to coach Adam Syty, who also coaches the Monomoy Regional High School track and field team.

“I think this helps the entire Cape get better from a running program standpoint,” he said.

There were about 20 athletes, including students from Monomoy, Nauset and other Cape schools as well as off-Cape participants, at a practice last Monday morning, which began with some brief training led by a local physical therapist. Then the kids split up into two groups with the program’s different coaches, three of whom are current collegiate runners, like Bailey Ford, who said she’d been with Riptide since seventh grade.

“I would come here in the fall for nighttime workouts and everything, and I would meet a bunch of kids my age that were interested in running, so it really made me love the sport even more,” Ford said.

Going on to run in college was then “probably one of the best decisions” Ford made, she said.

“I just want them to be able to love running as much as I did, because it's something that really helps you mentally and also physically,” Ford said. 

The club takes things seriously but meets participants wherever they are at the beginning of the summer, Crowell said.

There’s a specific performance group within the program for elite runners seeking to continue running in college. And some within the program aren’t even planning to run for a high school team but may be athletes in other sports, according to Crowell.

It’s said that cross country championships are won in the summer, but track athletes, in addition to cross country runners, see improvements from the summer training, according to Syty. Getting stronger aerobically and building the kind of fitness promoted by the club is good for everybody, he said.

“You're building your aerobic base,” Syty said. “You're putting mileage in. You're getting stronger. You're maintaining that fitness that you built from the previous year, and you're bringing that fitness then into your fall season, so that you don't have to play catch up that entire fall season.”

Bringing together kids from around the area to train together also generates some camaraderie that continues into the school sports seasons.

“I think just having this group of kids from all across the Cape keeps up the nature of the sport of running in general, which is to support each other and be positive,” said Dylan Moreno, a Riptide coach and collegiate runner.

Another Riptide coach and collegiate runner, Luke Bullock, said the athletes and coaches had all become friends. 

“I feel like there's such a strong running community up in the Boston area, like you see runners everywhere, and I think that's so beautiful, and it's so motivating and inspiring,” Bullock said. “So down here with Riptide, I think it's fun to see a running community form here.”

Riptide Running Club is USA Track and Field-recognized and sponsored financially by the Andrea Holden Foundation. More information can be found at riptiderunning.com.