There Was a Spring in Fowkes’s Step at Katy’s Courage
The weather was, at long last, spring-like when more than 600 runners set forth from Sag Harbor’s West Water Street in the eighth running of the Katy’s Courage 5K Saturday morning. It was the first road race here of the season.
Ryan Fowkes, 17, an East Hampton High School junior and the school’s best distance runner, was to win it, in 16 minutes and 48.37 seconds, unheaded throughout the pleasant 3.1-mile loop through the village.
Fowkes was third in this race last year, though under the weather, he said, finishing in 17:12.22. He would like, he added, to shave about 10 seconds from his 4:30 mile time this season.
Brian Marciniak, 31, who is better known as a basketball player, was the runner-up, in 17:35.23, with Omar Leon, a teammate of Fowkes’s, third, in 17:37.93.
The women’s winner, and 13th over all, was Tara Farrell, 39, of East Quogue, a frequent winner in South Fork road races, in 19:24.46.
The foundation named in memory of Jim and Brigid Collins Stewart’s daughter, Katy, who died of a rare form of liver cancer at the age of 12 seven years ago, underwrites scholarships at Pierson and East Hampton High Schools, as well as funds free Katy’s Kids sessions for grieving children at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton.
The scholarships, the Stewarts have said, go “to students who exemplify remarkable courage, kindness, and empathy, as did Katy during her all too brief but exceptional lifetime.”
A committee chooses the male and female winners at Pierson; at East Hampton, the recipients are chosen by the student council. The Pierson scholarships, said Katy’s mother, who walked that day with her 90-year-old mother, Mary Collins of Longmeadow, Mass., are $10,000 ones ($2,500 a year). As for the East Hampton scholarships, she said, “Whatever they raise we match.”
Mary Rocker of Twin Forks Accounting in East Hampton, who tallies the Katy’s Courage numbers, said Monday that while it was too soon to report the 5K’s net proceeds, “$16,020 was raised prior to the race through sponsorships.”
Jen Dagan, the race’s official timer, said there were 727 entries and 648 finishers, the eldest, at 93, being Jim Stewart’s father, Walt, a member of the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Bill O’Donnell, who was to die unexpectedly two days later, was particularly happy to tell this writer not to forget to say that his wife, Diane, 67, and their daughter, Caitlin, 30, had each won their age groups — Caitlin O’Donnell in 22:18.14, and Diane O’Donnell in 29:25.75. An inveterate runner, swimmer, and triathlete, he had come that morning to cheer them on.
East Hampton’s boys and girls track teams had good turnouts — 15 or so in the girls’ case and 20 or so in the boys’. Coaches — Yani Cuesta, Diane O’Donnell, Mike Buquicchio, and Kevin Barry among them — ran too.
Ava Engstrom, one of Cuesta’s top performers, topped the 14-and-under female division — a group that numbered 104 participants — in 20:35.60. Right behind her, in 20:35.68, was her teammate Isabella Tarbet, who was the 15-19 division’s female winner. They were 27th and 28th over all.
Robert Weiss, an East Hampton sprinter, was 10th, in 19:03.15. James Consiglio, a 57-year-old East Hamptoner, was 15th — and second in the 50-59 age group — in 19:25.18. Right behind him was Mike Bahel, in 19:37.39.
Bahel’s Hither Hills half-marathon, by the way, is to be contested at the Ed Ecker County Park in Montauk on May 19, at 8 a.m.
Asked how the East Hampton boys team had been doing, Buquicchio said he hoped that, like the weather, the team would warm up. He and Ben Turnbull, the head coach, who was not there that day, have been getting good performances from Fowkes, Weiss, Leon, Matt Maya, and from Ruben Santana, among others.
Cuesta’s team also has been taking its lumps lately. Last week, the girls lost 98-43 to Miller Place — a meet in which Tarbet won the 3,000, and in which she, Ellie Borzilleri, Bella Espinoza, and Engstrom won the 4-by-400 relay. Helen Barranco won the discus and the shot-put, with Michelle Barranco taking third in each of these events.
Runners-up included the 4-by-100 relay team of Ashley Peters, Jen Ortiz, Shania Gordon, and Lillie Minskoff; Peters in the pole vault, Borzilleri in the long jump, and Minskoff in the 200.
Third-place finishers were Ortiz, in the triple jump; Engstrom, in the 1,500; JiJi Kramer, in the 1,500-meter racewalk; Penelope Greene, in the 800; Peters, in the 200; Molly Mamay, in the 400 intermediate hurdles, and Zoe Leach, in the high jump.