Alumni gathering(s): Save the date(s)!

We’d like to think our Marist Running Alumni Family is loyal and tight knit, and we’ll have the opportunity to validate those awesome and wonderful beliefs later this fall. Of course! Some don’t have to wait that long, as a few “alumni weddings” are pending in the coming weeks and months (and spilling into 2022 as well!). As the world slowly begins to emerge from the grips of this global pandemic, normalcy is also gradually beginning to blossom as well. So many touchstone moments were canceled and lost in 2020 and into 2021. “Save-the-date” moments are beginning to come back, and let this be one of them: Please plan on returning to the Marist College campus for the weekend of Friday through Sunday, October 22-24, for Homecoming Weekend. For members of the Class of 1986 (which includes this old coach), it’s our 35^th reunion tour. However! For all of us in the track and cross country world, it’s much more than that. Along with Joan Gambeski in the advancement office at Marist, we have been planning a huge, colossal – and long overdue! – track and cross country alumni reunion, with a ceremony on Saturday morning to honor the formation of the track team way back more than 50 years ago. Planning for this was in the works last year, but obviously those plans were scuttled by you-know-what.

This is going to be big, and this is going to be fun. There will be long-ago alums from the late 1960s and early 1970s. We’d like to make this a huge celebration. We’re inviting all the men from the early days of the program from 1960s through the mid-1980s, and the women and men from the mid-1980s through the present. We are attempting to get all living coaches back on campus for this, along with as many of YOU back on campus. The goal will be to intermingle the many generations of Marist Running on one morning (Saturday, in the new addition to the McCann Center) and one weekend (throughout campus). Exact details on the entire weekend are still being ironed out, but this will be a track alumni-themed focus to the weekend. This will be for US. So please! Don’t wait for your “reunion” year to come back to campus – come back THIS year. We could all use some camaraderie and hugs and good feelings and socialization, after a long and difficult slog of the recent past. Start spreading the word on this.

Also, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, normalcy is also beginning to creep back into the road racing scene. The New York City and Boston Marathons are back on the calendar. Locally, the Dutchess County Classic will be up and running again in September (Sunday, September 19). This race has always been a magnet for alums to come back and race in the 5km, half marathon and full marathon. The latest iteration of the Classic runs from Dutchess Community College, just up the hill from Marist. We expect a decent to strong turnout of Marist Running alums. There was already a long thread on the 1997-era alums group text about coming back to race. But talk about feeling old … there were numerous texts about creaking, arthritic joints and a pending hip replacement surgery, yikes! Speaking of “save-the-date” moments, an informal but awesome tradition has begun to emerge around the Classic, and that is a post-race gathering at the Town of Poughkeepsie residence of one Mr. Bucket (also known in some circles as “David Swift”). Consider that weekend a “pre-game” for Homecoming Weekend.

The bottom line is this: The fact that we are “saving dates” and planning for future events? Just indicates that things are getting better by the day, which is neat.