Mascenic and Conant may be rivals on the basketball court, the baseball field and the soccer pitch, but when it comes to cross-country running, the Vikings and Orioles exist as one. In that spirit, Mascenic coach Mike Smith and Conant coach Erin Kelly came together to put on the For the Love of the Run summer cross-country camp last week through the Jaffrey Recreation Department.
“It’s really nice working with Mike,” Kelly said, “because even though Mascenic and Conant are frenemies … having stronger runners to run against makes you better. So it’s in our best interest to have everyone from the community learn together, become better together and work together all season long.”
Eleven campers, ranging from elementary to high school age, came together last week to run, swim, have fun and eat ice cream, all to make themselves better runners.
“When you have someone like Coach Kelly and Coach Smith, they’ve been running their whole lives, so they can show their endurance and what they’ve learned over the years,” said camper Victoria Smith. She’d just completed a cooldown run from the Conant track facility to the town beach, where the gang was ready to hit the water.
The kids enjoyed the fun activities just as much as the runnig, it turned out. Mackenize Cormier had a great time at the camp, she said. She loves cross-country because “it’s a team sport, and you get to meet other people.” However, as her fellow camper Amelia Smith was quick to point out, “You can do it by yourself. You don’t need a group to do it.”
The group set a lot of goals during their week. James Mormando, who’s going into seventh grade at JRMS, wants to beat his best mile time during the course of the upcoming season; his training last week will likely help. And, he wants to beat his sister, Conant standout Isabella Mormando, though he said that will be a tall order — “she’s fast,” he said.
Victoria Smith, too, wants to break her PR at Boynton this year.
“I’m okay with my pace but I need to go a little bit faster,” she said.
And Cormier? She hopes to be as good a runner as her uncle, Lance Somero.
“He ran up Mount Washington,” she said. “He’s a committed runner.”
Coach Smith has been involved with the camp for years, since he picked it up to continue the legacy of late ConVal coach Jack Murphy. Initially, he’d envisioned it as a camp for elite high school runners to get themselves in tip-top shape for the season, but it quickly turned into a camp for younger kids working their way toward high school careers — something that will benefit the programs even more, in the long run.
“The better way to make your program strong is to start at the beginning and give them a foundation that they can build off of,” Smith said, “mostly trying to develop the love of the sport. How many time have you heard a high-schooler say, ‘Man, I hate the running part. I love basketball but he makes us run ten laps,’ or something like that. We get kids early and provide them an opportunity to enjoy the sport and I think that that helps out our cross-country teams, but it also helps our other teams. Not everyone who does running club ends up in cross-country.”