With the blessings of East Hampton’s athletic director, the school board’s athletic committee, and the varsity cross-country and track coaches, two high school juniors who have been long-distance runners since an early age, Dylan Cashin and Liam Fowkes, are about to launch a youth track club here that they hope will stir up enthusiasm for the sport they love.
Asked what he loved about it, Fowkes, who’s playing on East Hampton’s strong boys basketball team at the moment, said, “I love how it clears my mind — it’s literally a breath of fresh air.”
As for Cashin, “I like the camaraderie and the positive vibes it creates . . . it’s a really good sport with really good people.”
It was Cashin who came up with the idea last summer, when she ran periodically with friends from up west on the Island, who told her about the youth track clubs in their towns. She then ran the idea by the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s Jennifer Fowkes, Liam’s mother, and Sharon McCobb, the club’s president, who agreed that getting elementary-age students engaged in running — a healthy, lifelong sport — was indeed worth pursuing.
A Bonac Bolts flier says the club, which is to meet at 10:30 Sunday mornings at the high school’s track from March 5 through April, is open to all second through sixth graders here free of charge.
“Did you know that running relieves stress, that it boosts self-confidence and improves your mood?” the flier also says.
The club’s goal, Cashin said, will be to run in the May Day 5K, a race over the old Georgica Jog course that she and a teammate, Ryleigh O’Donnell, with the help of OMAC and East Hampton Village, oversaw at the village’s Main Beach last year. That inaugural effort attracted more than 600 runners and raised $18,000 for the Family Service League, an agency providing mental health services across Long Island.
Kathy Masterson, the East Hampton School District’s athletic director, said she thought the club would be “a great way to introduce kids to a lifelong sport that will keep them healthy and will promote their well-being.”
“It will be good to expose elementary kids to running,” said Diane O’Donnell, whose East Hampton High School girls cross-country team, led by Cashin, won the school’s first league championship in the sport this fall. “Usually, in the gym classes, they’re steered toward sports like volleyball and basketball — that they should do game sports is set in their brains. Racing is hard, from start to finish, but the training is fun — the more kids, the more energy’s created. I hope Dylan and Liam are successful.”
“All you need to join is a pair of shoes and a good attitude,” McCobb said during an interview with her, Cashin, Liam Fowkes, and Jennifer Fowkes in the high school’s library last week. She added that she was hoping a good number of girls would turn out, knowing that, while “boys generally run alone, they would do it anyway, girls like company . . . they like having their friends around them.”
A Bonac Bolts “overview” that Cashin and Fowkes wrote and which has been distributed in the schools here, says, in part, “We know boys and girls have over the past three years been traumatized by the Covid pandemic. For many of these kids the 2022-23 school year is the first year ever that they’ve been in school full-time, interacting with their peers. For girls especially there has been a lack of youth sports programs in which they can participate prior to seventh grade. We want to give both boys and girls the opportunity to increase their physical fitness, boost their self-confidence, and relieve stress. And, hopefully, they will gain an appreciation for running, which has been important for both of us as we have grown up.”
Eight “practice sessions will teach you not just how to run, but also will teach you the skills associated with keeping you fit to run. . . . If sneakers are an issue, we’ll be able to provide them. Just let us know.”
Registration will be held on the opening day, March 7. Meanwhile, those interested in joining the Bonac Bolts can call Cashin at 631-377-8940 or Fowkes at 631-204-7772.
