A new athletic club in town is on track to "run this town" one kilometre at a time.
The Collingwood Runners is a track and field club just starting out and founded by a group of runners who wanted to serve, grow, and challenge the local running community.
One of the club's founders, Brock Tadashore, said there were many reasons he and others started the club in Collingwood, but most simply, it was because there wasn't a running club in town already.
"There are lots of kids and students and high school kids that go out of town to train," said Tadashore. "Hopefully, as we grow, these kids down have to leave town to train."
He was inspired by the Meaford Coyotes who he said made a "sea of orange" in their jerseys at the Meaford Harbour run last year.
The Collingwood Runners wear blue t-shirts bearing the slogan "we run this town."
"To travel to events as a team would be great," said Tadashore, who envisions two streams for the club, a recreational stream and a competitive stream. "We want to give these kids and athletes a chance to practice ... and to create confidence."
The club was also created with community building in mind.
"People who are new to the area or they're new to running or they used to run with a group and they don't have that group anymore, this just helps build that community," he said.
The club is about 75 members strong after a single eight-week session with groups for kids in Grade 3 and under, Grade 4-6, Grade 7-8, and high school plus adults.
Tadashore would like to see more adults joining the club for the twice-a-week sessions that take place at Harbourview Park and at Collingwood Collegiate Institute's track.
At the high school track, there's more focus on track-and-field events including long and triple jumps.
"If there's someone who has an interest, we try to meet that interest and find a coach or someone in the community who is experienced in that," said Tadashore. "All of our coaches have different backgrounds, which we try to pull from and it's been a lot of fun."
So far, the club's coaching and volunteer team includes: Jordan Cascagnette, Collin Wallace, Caitlin Foisy, Brock Tadashore, Ryan Baulke, Scott Ford, James Orr, Shelby Thomson, Steph Boutette, Jessica Czaikowski, Jenn Tadashore, and Avery O'Neil.
The spring/summer session for the club will wrap up on July 6 with some runners participating in the Meaford Harbour Run/Walk 5-K event, and others in the Summit 700 at Blue Mountain also on July 6.
"We've structured our program to help train for those events ... we're going to have a fall session that's a bit more trail and cross-country related," said Tadashore.
Tadashore is a lifelong athlete who has made running a big part of his adult life. He is part of the club with his kids, which is something he values as a father and a runner.
Not only can families participate in the twice-weekly workouts together, the kids and adults benefit from each others' competition and experiences.
"You've got these high school kids chasing some of the adults, some of them are pretty fast, and at the same time, some of the (adults) are new to running so it creates some fun competition and it holds people accountable," said Tadashore.
And speaking of fun, the June 25 practice ended with a surprise visit from an ice cream truck, a reward for all the club membership that spent the last eight weeks training hard.
Anyone interested in signing up for the fall session, which begins in September, can visit the club's website at collingwoodrunners.com and find them on social media. The club and coaches are registered with Athletics Ontario.
