The Oak Lawn boys cross-country team wants to reach across an ocean to lend a helping hand.
What better way to do it than to run across a state?
That’s what 24 runners from Oak Lawn and Richards did in a 24-hour period that ended at 5:10 p.m. Friday at the Oak Lawn track. As the song, “The Final Countdown,” blared through loudspeakers, the runners ran a victory lap before breaking the tape at a finish line to the cheers of family, friends and local dignitaries.
They had begun this journey at 5 p.m. the previous day near the western bank of the Mississippi River in Clinton, Iowa. Now, 166 miles later, they were home.
“It seemed a lot longer,” Oak Lawn runner Mike Zero said.
He wasn’t complaining, no doubt because he understands a one-day relay run is nothing compared to the two-year journey he and seven teammates have undertaken to reach Kenya, where they will arrive next month on a service trip.
The eight athletes need about $40,000 to fund the trip, which is not school-sponsored, and raising that money has tested their creativity and resolve.
“It was pretty intimidating when I first thought about it, but we had a lot good ideas that came through real well,” Zero said.
The idea for the Kenya project came from chats Oak Lawn boys cross-country coach Chris Repa and one of his runners, Dan Buys, had about service trips each had taken. The pair and Craig Maher began preliminary planning in September 2004.
Early last year twin brothers Mark and Matt Miller, Andy Paluck, Will Stanko, Keith VandeWerken and Zero joined the group, which named itself Cross Countries. Maher, Stanko and VandeWerken will be seniors this fall. Zero will be a junior, and the rest are now alumni.
“I just thought this was the one time in my life I’d be able to do something like this,” Zero said.
The travel party also includes Repa and Travis Tuomey, the Miller twins’ father.
To raise money the runners sold pumpkins and baked goods, ran a candlelight bowling event, washed cars, collected cash at intersections and made pitches to local groups. That got them almost to the $36,000 mark, and the relay would be their last big push toward 40 grand.
They recruited seven more runners from Oak Lawn and another nine from Richards, which is less than two miles away. At midday Thursday a parent-driven van with six runners headed for Iowa to run the first quarter of the relay, in which each runner would cover about six miles.
Another van would drive to a point about a quarter of the way along the route, where it would pick up the relay as the first van finished its work, after which it would head home. Two other vans performed similarly, and at about 4:30 p.m. Friday the runners reassembled at Richards, from where they ran together to Oak Lawn with a police and fire department escort.
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The relay route was a bit more hilly than some expected, and there was at least one, and ultimately harmless, encounter with a dog; but the relay went smoothly, even if it was pitch black at night on the back roads the runners used to avoid traffic. A runner had a bicycle rider–one of the other runners–nearby at all times as protection when a vehicle did go by.
The Cross Countries participants organized and ran the relay, as they have run their other fund-raising events. That included plotting the route, which they drove three times to make sure it would work.
Their efforts paid off with $3,100 by the relay’s start, pushing their total to $39,000, with a few smaller activities still to come.
“It feels great to watch the kids grow as they have,” said Repa, who also ran a relay leg. “To see them raise $40,000 in 1 1/2 years with just eight kids and show such compassion for other people . . . as a teacher it’s why we do what we do.”
That desire to make a difference in the world has kept the eight teenagers running. They will leave July 7 for Maseno in western Kenya to spend 3 1/2 weeks helping to renovate a hospital and perhaps an orphanage in an impoverished rural area beset by AIDS. They will return Aug. 4.
With the relay over and adequate funding all but assured, the runners finally are regarding their trip as a given rather than a goal.
“We’ve just been planning so long to see it finally come together is amazing,” Zero said.
It was a bit amazing as well to see two rival Village of Oak Lawn high school cross-country teams come together to help get it done. For a project that will cross countries and a state, you’d think for sure it could cross a mere suburb, but with athletic rivals it sometimes seems easier to reach across the oceans than across the street.
Yet when Cross Countries sought relay help from Richards in March, runner Scott Hankes, who is friendly with some Oak Lawn runners, quickly helped form a group that also included his brother, Brian. Like the 15 Oak Lawn students, each Richards runner was to raise at least $1,000.
“I love competing with these guys,” Scott Hankes said of his Oak Lawn counterparts. “Why not help out? It sounded like an awesome project.”
So awesome that Hankes wouldn’t mind going too.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” he said, “but at the same time these are the ideal guys to go. They’re a perfect fit.”
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