By Sophia Guevara
The Newtown High School Girls’ Track and Field Team is hosting a Run-a-thon event on Saturday, April 9 at the Newtown High School Blue and Gold Stadium with means to spread interest in the sport while raising funds for the boys and girls track teams.
The first ever fundraising event for this team was put together by Senior Amelia Daly along with the cooperation of her teammates and head coach, Rebecca Knapp-Bourett. As a senior at Newtown High School, Daly was tasked with coming up with a topic of interest for her Capstone project. This required project for Newtown seniors takes up half the year and components of it include reaching out to people in the community and piecing together research and new learning in a way that more impactful than the usual slide show presentation.
Daly’s Capstone project soon evolved from an interest in the sport to a community event that benefits not only the athletes on the team but also the future of the program.
“The main goal for this project is to get younger kids interested in track. Most of us get to high school and join the team without knowing what it takes to be a competitor. I want young kids to come up and see how the boys and girls teams are like a big family and how much we all love it. Running is so beneficial and it is even better when you’re doing it with your best friends” NHS senior Amelia Daly said.
The event will begin at 11:00am with the track team running laps around the track. Each runner has a number of sponsors that have donated a certain amount of money to the program per lap. Once the Run-a-thon portion is over, the athletes will begin teaching children of all ages from the community about how to run and will lead activities such as relay races for all to participate in.
“I started running track and field my freshman year and my passion for the sport has grown immensely. My sophomore season was lost to COVID-19 and so was my opportunity to ever run at the Yale Bowl Invitational since the meet was canceled due to COVID for the two seasons after that. Because of that I’ve been pushing for our team to attend more invitational meets but the only problem is how expensive they are. Each athlete entry costs around fifty-dollars and the track budget can only cover so much,” Daly said.
Invitational meets are track meets hosted at specific locations and are set in place to showcase the top track athletes in the area. Coaches hand select certain athletes from their teams to go and run at invitationals in hopes of gaining personal records by running against competition that they otherwise would not come across in just the local meets.
“The way it’s looking, I’ll be able to send my girls to a number of invitationals. I’m really proud of them for all of this. They work so hard and deserve to get out there with the best of the best,” NHS Girls Track and Field head coach Rebecca Knapp-Bourett said.