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Amy Yoder Begley competes at the 2005 Tufts 10K.
What's your idea of the perfect high school running camp?
How about this: a run in the morning, followed by breakfast, then a talk, either by the camp staff or guests like Amy Rudolph, Carrie Tollefson, or Daniel Lincoln. Then, after an outdoor games session, the camp adjourns to the local stadium to watch the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships - complete with cowbells - where several of the camp staff are actually competing?
The 70 runners of the 2006 adidas Yoder Begley camp are following that schedule, and they're easy to find at the track, occupying an entire section trackside near the top of the homestretch. It's plain from the range of different t-shirts with the camp name that there are many returning campers. They came out Wednesday evening to watch counselor Brock Hagerman and Alex Banfich running the junior men's (Hagerman) and women's (Banfich) 5,000m races, and they'll be out on Friday when camp namesake Amy Yoder Begley runs the senior women's 5,000m final.
"I placed them here," she said. "Last year, I was fourth coming into the homestretch, and I finished seventh. I figure with these guys here, I'll have some extra motivation to hang on."
Yoder Begley was the 2001 NCAA 10,000m champion, and in 2004 she won a U.S. 10k road championship at the Tufts 10k in Boston. Before that, though, she was a four-time Indiana state high school champion, and she and her husband Andrew Begley - himself a four-time Indiana state high school champion and a two-time cross country All-American at the University of Arkansas, where they both ran - started the camp in the summer of 2000 for the improvement of high school distance running in Indiana.
"They all run cross country, and 800m and up on the track," Yoder Begley says of their athletes. They changed the schedule for the camp's seventh summer; while it usually goes from Saturday to Wednesday, this year's camp runs from Wednesday to Sunday to allow the athletes to attend the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Indianapolis. "We wanted to show them some of the events they might not have seen before, like the steeplechase." Coming so soon after the end of the high school track season, the camp doesn't focus on actual training, but rather on getting the campers "prepared and excited" for their next season.
The lineup of outside speakers is impressive. "Running is a small world," Yoder Begley says. "I can just ask people." People like Rudolph, Tollefson, and Anthony Famiglietti, fellow adidas athletes, or former Arkansas teammates like Daniel Lincoln. Among the "past staff" listed on the camp website are Alistair Cragg, Christin Wurth, and former Division III national champion Johanna Olson.
"We want to show them that these athletes aren't any different from them," Yoder Begley says.
Posted by Parker Morse at 6:56 p.m. | Tags: Athlete Features, 2006 USA Outdoor T&F Champs