Photo by NATALEE WATERS / THE ROANOKE TIMES
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| Will Stuart (from left), Ben Dowdy and Laurence Loesel hope to bring attention to Project 50, a Cave Spring High School fund-raising effort.
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3 to run cross-country, literally, for high school
'Knight's Crossing' evolves from vision to reality for Cave Spring athletic program.
May 8, 2003
By RYAN BASEN
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Photo by NATALEE WATERS / THE ROANOKE TIMES
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| Cave Spring High School students see the trio off at a rally at the school Monday afternoon. |
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FACTS ABOUT PROJECT 50
Project 50, a plan to construct and renovate athletic facilities, was announced in April by the Cave Spring High School Booster Club. The club will try to raise $1.5 million in private funds by November 2004. The club aims to begin construction and renovation in the spring of 2006. The booster club sent letters to about 18,800 Cave Spring alumni seeking donations and will raise the rest of the money through auctions and fund-raisers.
The project calls for new eight-lane rubberized German broken-back track, artificial-surface practice field for soccer and football, field house, storage building and outdoor shelters. It does not include a football stadium. The Knights continue to play football games at Cave Spring Middle School. In a separate project, Cave Spring plans to begin building a new softball field in 2004.
Web sites of interest:
www.rcs.k12.va.us/cshs/50thanniversary.htm (The home page for Project 50)
www.rcs.k12.va.us/cshs/p50_layout.htm (A visual look at Project 50)
www.rcs.k12.va.us/cshs/
project_announcement.htm (Cave Spring's Knight's Crossing page)
www.cavespringknightscrossing.com (Knight's Crossing home page)
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Laurence Loesel and Will Stuart were lounging in a friend's room on the campus of Roanoke College last fall when the subject of Cave Spring High School's athletic facilities came up.
Loesel, the assistant cross-country coach at Cave Spring, believed the facilities needed serious improvement. Wouldn't it be cool, someone said, to run across the United States to help raise money for facility renovations?
Others in the room passed the idea off as a joke. Loesel didn't.
Instead, he pitched it to Cave Spring athletic director Randy Meck, who was skeptical at first. But over the past few months, Loesel, 23, has developed that idea and will soon act on it.
For much of the next two or more months, he and fellow Roanokers Stuart, a former track and cross-country teammate at Roanoke College, and Ben Dowdy will run about 2,800 miles from Sacramento, Calif., to Roanoke to raise awareness and funds for Project 50 -- an initiative launched by the Cave Spring Booster Club to renovate the school's athletic facilities by 2006.
And they're off
On Monday, Loesel and Dowdy, 24, both Cave Spring graduates, left with Stuart, 22, in an RV headed for San Francisco. If they follow their arduous schedule, they should start the first leg of their return trip -- a 45-mile run from Sacramento to Placerville, Calif. -- May 12. The former college runners -- Dowdy at Virginia Tech -- will go as a relay team, each running about 15 miles per day for 68 days.
They will run in 11 states through the spring and summer, sleeping in the RV most nights. They'll rotate, with one running, one riding a bike and the other driving the RV. Dowdy will leave briefly May 27 and return to finish the run, but they will never be alone.
Dave McGillivray, who ran solo more than 3,400 miles from Medford, Ore., to Medford, Mass., in 1978, said that makes their run more feasible.
"A relay is significantly different than doing it solo," said McGillivray, a North Andover, Mass., resident who has advised the Roanoke trio. "Maybe that is the more palatable way to go."
Attracting celebrity attention
The trio has already attracted so much attention to their plans that Forrest Gump may join them. Actor Tom Hanks -- who, in the 1994 movie, portrayed a man who ran across the country numerous times -- has expressed interest in running some with them.
According to Terri Langford, Cave Spring's booster club president, other celebrities and national media have also contacted the club about their journey -- dubbed "Knight's Crossing" for Cave Spring's nickname. They have also received offers to attend a parade and to have mayors run with them.
"People are just going crazy," said Langford, a 1981 Cave Spring graduate whose son, Joe, is a freshman at the school. "I'm not sure how much people realize how this is going to bring Roanoke to the forefront."
Wild idea, well thought out
That is one reason Loesel, a 2002 Roanoke College graduate, pursued his far-fetched idea. He spent December planning the trip and, using his skills as a business student, wrote a 50-page report and devised a Power Point presentation to sell the booster club on it.
"My initial reaction was, 'You are absolutely nuts,'" Meck said. "There are probably 10 people that come into my office every week with some crazy idea. But none of them were as prepared as he was."
Despite not knowing Langford, Loesel persuaded her to let him speak to the booster club. On Jan. 6, he gave a persuasive three-hour presentation.
"I had this young boy who calls me on the phone one night and says 'I need to come to your booster club meeting,'" Langford said. "When they first came to us, from the parents on the board you had this ... doubt thing. And then you listen to them talk and you think, 'Why not?'"
The club needs as much help as it can get to raise its target $1.5 million for the privately funded Project 50. Cave Spring may get a grant from Roanoke County Parks and Recreation, but will raise the bulk of the funds with donations from alumni, auctions and other fund-raisers.
As of May 5, the club had raised $40,000, about 2.7 percent of the goal. Langford said they hope to begin construction after the 2004 football season, aiming for completion by the summer of 2006, Cave Spring's 50th anniversary.
Raising awareness
Knight's Crossing will not directly raise money, but it hopes to bring attention to Project 50. Loesel figures to benefit from the project. It calls for a new, eight-lane German broken-back synthetic track to be installed with two shelters, allowing for the school to host major track meets.
"With the size of the community, I can't believe we don't have facilities like this," he said.
The renovation will also feature refurbished football and soccer practice fields and a new field house with a weight room, opening up indoor storage space for winter sports.
"Just about every sport is going to be helped by this project," Meck said. "I have no doubt this is going to be a reality three, four years from now. Hopefully the run will help win some of these people over."
Top notch runners
That is Loesel's goal. He initially planned to run alone until Dowdy and Stuart expressed interest in joining him. He and Stuart were All-Conference selections in cross country last year at Roanoke College, and Dowdy was Timesland's Runner of the Year in 1997.
While Dowdy is prepared for long runs after training in college by running 100 miles in a week, Loesel, who has never run a marathon, is prepared after running 60-70 miles in certain weeks in school.
Finn Pincus, his coach at Roanoke College, said the run will not be as difficult as it seems. Pincus said because they have little pressure to finish quickly, the quality of their runs doesn't have to match the distance.
"They're very capable," said Pincus, who coached Stuart and Loesel together for four years. "They're overachievers. When they tackle a project they're going to see it through."
Pincus believes they won't tire of running "because they run every day anyway. ... They may get tired of looking at each other in that vehicle."
They're going the distance
Despite obstacles such as the heat and snakes of California and Nevada and the mountains of Colorado, not to mention general health concerns, Dowdy and Loesel fully expect to finish the run.
"We're doing this for distance," not speed, Dowdy said. "I think we can easily do this."
McGillivray said the most difficult parts of his 1978 run were going through the hills of Pennsylvania and maintaining patience. The trio will face major hills in Ohio and West Virginia, but their patience should be bolstered by one another's company.
McGillivray, who has advised others doing cross-country runs, was impressed by the trio's organization. He believes they will finish, though he warned that "all you need is one injury and you have to abort.
"I'm fully confident that these guys have prepared," said McGillivray, who runs DMSE, a sports marketing and management company in North Andover, Mass. "My gut tells me this isn't a stunt. This is an honest effort to do something that's very challenging and at the same time very worthwhile."
On the road
Cave Spring showed its appreciation for their effort Monday afternoon, when Meck introduced the trio before the student body in the school gym. Calling Loesel "absolutely the craziest guy you will ever meet," Meck thanked them as they marched out of the gym, climbed into the RV and followed two ambulances out of the school parking lot to begin the drive to San Francisco.
With a computer and cellphones on board, they will update their progress on a Web site, cavespringknightscrossing.com. They plan to return to the school July 18, when Loesel may throw a big homecoming party.
After months of training and planning and selling his idea, Loesel said he's excited to finally get started.
"We had to go through a lot of hoops to get where we are," he said. "Ten years down the road I'll be able to talk about running across the country instead of getting a job three months earlier."
