By Scott Linnell

​​Eagle-fast members of Shore Athletic Club seized glory for themselves and the club at two high visibility race on the weekend before Thanksgiving.
 
On Saturday, November 20, Roberta Groner notched another masters victory as she bested all 40-and-over ladies in the Philadelphia Half Marathon.  Her scorching time of 1:14:05, a pace of 5:39 per mile, ranked her fourth among all women.

Pictured Above: Roberta Groner tears up the downtown boulevards of Philadelphia.

Shore AC was also superbly represented by Kristen Prendergast, who placed third among masters females in 1:21:43.  Newcomer Christiana Rutkowski finished a mere 8 second behind Kristen, crossing in 1:21:50.
 
The following day, several Shore AC men honored one of the USA’s greatest presidents in the59th annual JFK 50 mile race in Maryland.  Justin Scheid covered the half-century course in an amazing time of 5:46:21 to place fifth overall out of 933 runners.  Rick Lee navigated the long, winding course in a tremendous 7:20:58, beating all other 60-and-over runners by well over an hour – EXCEPT for a local 61-year-old that finished 1 minute ahead of Rick.  (Where did THAT guy come from???)  Shortly thereafter, Tim McQueen completed the ultramarathon in a herculean 7:43:31.  Well done to all three outstanding gentlemen!
​

Pictured Above: Justin Scheid all smiles with 5th place award.
Pictured Below: ​Rick Lee hits his stride along a stream-side trail.

Pictured Above: ​Tim McQueen is congratulated at the finish line by Reno Stirrat.

By Elliott Denman

SHORE AC TEAMMATES EXCEL AT 50TH RUNNING OF TCS NYC MARATHON IN THE BIG APPLE !!!!

Cheers again for Lindsay Ritchings, Kellee McEwen, Laura Donnelly, Marc Bagan and Maria Paul.

Verrry well done, Shore AC teammates, at the 50th running of the TCS NYC Marathon, Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021.

The Big Race in the Big Apple was back in a big way and we were a big part of it, along with our 30,000-plus friends from around the world..

Lindsay led the way for the Shore AC delegation with a 2:58.04 clocking.  And all best wishes to you, Lindsay, on upcoming marriage !!!

Kellee arrived at Tavern on the Green in 3:09.00.

Laura clocked in at 4:44.24.

Veteran racewalker Marc continued his long array of NYC completions with his 6:44.11 arrival.

Veteran racewalker Maria continued her long record of marvelous good and humanitarian deeds by accompanying an Achilles Club athlete on the tour of the five boroughs... She'd done it several times before and there was Maria out there once again, helping out in such a great way.

Many Shore AC members and friends, as ever, were a big part of The Big Race, in assorted capacities, too. Congrats to one and all.

It was terrific, too, seeing Shore AC teammate Marc Bloom's NY Times retrospective article about his adventurous days as a member of 
the bicycle team providing on-course highlights in the early-years of network TV coverage...Well done, Marc.

Elliott D.
Shore AC Trustee
(and proud 33-time NYC finisher..)

By Elliott Denman

Fifty-one-plus years have flown by - but to Ralph Garfield the events of September 13. 1970 seem like just a handful of yesterdays down the road in his memory book.

The 86-year-old Manalapan resident was one of 127 starters in the initial edition of the New York City Marathon, which was staged as a totally low-key trot confined entirely to the 
inner roadways of Manhattan's Central Park.  Of those 127 - just 55 of them, all men, finished their assigned rounds of four-plus park loops, totaling the official marathon 
distance of 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.2 kilometers.)

There were few frills - race organizer Fred Lebow had somehow scrounged an event budget of just one thousand dollars; there was no prize money, and top finishers were rewarded only with the hand-me-down trophies Lebow had managed to assemble.

Mayor John Lindsay had just recently closed Central Park to vehicular traffic on Sundays, giving Lebow and running friends - who'd previously held their events in the Bronx, Queens and nearby suburbs - the chance to stage this event in the recreational heart of The Big Apple.

But few even knew it was going on.  Certainly not the mass media who'll assemble for the 50th running of the Marathon this coming Sunday, Nov. 7th.   Certainly not the few million who'll line the streets for the now-five-borough event that has evolved into a huge global happening. 
 
Garfield remembers it all oh-so-well.

Striding as briskly as he could through Central Park, he still had to struggle for elbow room amid the typical Sunday crowd of recreational joggers, walkers, strollers and bikers.

   "What the hell are you doing?" Garfield remembers being asked.

   "I'm running a marathon,"  he told the man.

   "Are you crazy?"  was the response.

And Garfield's answer was "yes."

So it went in the NYC Marathon's earliest moments.

Of the 55 who finished in 1970, Garfield placed 43rd in a time of four hours and seven minutes.

Long Islander Gary Muhrcke went on to win it with a clocking of 2:31:38, with Long Branch-born William Paterson University student Tom Fleming second in 2:35:44 and Ed Ayres of Washington, DC third in 2:39:17.

Of those 55 "originals,"  14 are returning for the 50th NYC Marathon on Sunday, as honored guests of the host New York Road Runners and host sponsor TCS.

  "It's nice to be remembered," said Garfield a few days ago.  "We're going to have a gala reunion on Friday night, and then be guests at the finish line at Tavern On The Green in Central Park on Sunday.  They're (NYRR) going all out to make this one a very special occasion."

In a perfect world, the 2021 Marathon should have been the 52nd in the series.  But the 2012 race was erased by Superstorm Sandy and the 2020 event by the Covid-19 pandemic.

So this will be the "50th running" of the event with a powerful international cast again gathered for the early morning start at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island.  On to Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx they'll go before crossing the Willis Avenue Bridge for final six miles of the race en route to the finish line at "the Tavern."

Garfield, who was born in England, retains vivid memories, as a young man, of watching the marathon finish at the 1948 London Olympic Games.  "Etienne Gailly of Belgium led coming into Wembley Stadium, but then started staggering and collapsing.  Just 60 yards or so from the finish line, he was passed by (Delfo) Carbrera of Argentina, and then by Tom Richards of England.  The crowd was going wild.  Gailly finally managed to rise up and finish third.  It was an amazing sight."  

Garfield came to the United States as a young man, earned his New York University degree and started a long career in the field of actuarial science.

As a member of both the Freehold Area Running Club and Shore Athletic Club, he never stopped running, either.

To his credit, he has notched eight NYC Marathon completions, two Londons, and one apiece in the Yonkers, NYC Earth Day, and Jersey Shore events, with a career-best clocking of 3:23 over the London course.

His best running in recent years has come in assorted shorter  events on the New Jersey circuit, and he's been a dominating force through his 70s and now 80s in assorted 5K and 10K events, and five-milers.

Just one of those original 14 returnees of 1970 will actually be running in the 2021 event.  He's Larry Trachtenberg, who ran it in 3:22:04, placing 32nd, as a 17-year-old student at Long Island City High School. Trachtenberg went on to excel as a distance runner at Princeton University and - now as a resident of Eugene, Oregon - continues living the lifestyle of a runner.

Due to pandemic limitations, the 2021 field has been reduced to just over 33,000 starters from its recent highs of over 50,000.

As ever, though, lots of New Jerseyans will be among those multitudes.

And no one will be asking, "are you crazy?"

Elliott Denman presents Congratulations Poster, autographed by Shore Athletic Club teammates and friends, to 11-time National Champion and 2-time USA Olympian Ajee' Wilson, Poster was designed and created by Shore AC's Mary Beth McDonnell.  Photo courtesy of Chanta Jackson, Township of Neptune Board of Education.

NEPTUNE HONORS AJEE’ WILSON AT TRACK-NAMING CEREMONY

By ELLIOTT DENMAN
These are heady days for Shore Conference enthusiasts.
The 48 conference high schools, 31 of them located in New Jersey’s Monmouth County, the other 17 in the adjacent Ocean County,
 have a whole lot to be verrrrry-verrrrry proud of, in and out of the world of sports.
Let us remind you that:

A Toms River High School North alumna, Maria Ressa, has been accorded the honor of all global honors.  Ms, Ressa is a 2021 recipient of the Nobel  Peace Prize. Wow, wow, and wow again !!

Of course, of course, a Freehold High School alumnus continues to be  “The Boss” of the entire Rock ‘n Roll universe.  Cheers again, Mr. Bruce Springsteen,

While Team USA men continue to struggle in global soccer, Team USA women continue atop – or near the pinnacle - of the sport known to the rest of the universe as football.
Of course, of course, with her three  Olympic gold medals and two FIFA World Cup golds, Point Pleasant Borough High School alumna Christie
Pearce  – the now-retired Team USA captain - is recognized as a principal building block of all the glories attained in her era.

Holmdel High School alumnus Brian Hanlon continues building on his reputation as one of the world's foremost sculptors, His elegant and numerous works can be seen, pretty much, everywhere.  And so there he was at St. John's University last week, unveiling the magnificent Lou Carnesecca statute to be displayed - where else - in the lobby of the Carnesecca Arena building that is home to the
noted Red Storm athletes in basketball and other sports.  He'd designed it all, etched it all, created it all.  So well that even Coach Looie, now 96, expressed his complete approval.

Before the official unveiling, Looie had kidded, "as I've said, Michelangelo couldn't have helped my face."  But he soon changed that tune to delight.
Meanwhile, way down yonder in New Orleans, the NFL Saints plan to induct the  late and truly great Long Branch High School alumnus,

Sam Mills, into their Ring of Honor, in recognition of the nine brilliant years he spent playing his heart  out as likely the greatest undersized linebacker the league has ever seen.
He’s beloved by Carolina Panthers and their corps of fans, too.  He’d played three more brilliant years as a Panther after his Saints’ days.   
 A Panthers’ spokesman, doing so with ultimate emotion, now reminds us, “in 2005, Mills died of cancer, but before the team’s 2003 playoff opener against the Cowboys, Mills told the team “when I found out I had cancer, there were two things I could do, quit or keep pounding.
   “I’m a fighter. I kept pounding. You’re fighters, too. Keep pounding!”
  And so that phrase — “keep pounding” — is still stitched into the collar of every Panthers jersey.

The spree of alumni recognition reached Neptune, too, in recent days.
   Celebrating the amazing run of success enjoyed by international track and field star Ajee’ Wilson – who actually attended Neptune Township’s Academy of Allied Health and Science, but competed for the across-the-street Neptune High School before her graduation in 2012 – Neptune hosted the dedication ceremony in which the oval at its Reynolds Athletic Complex was officially christened as
“The Ajee’ Wilson Track.”
    The formal gathering Oct. 15 was the highlight of a gala weekend featuring a Friday afternoon pep rally in the high school gymnasium, induction of the latest additions to the Neptune Hall of Fame, and a Saturday morning parade leading into the Homecoming football game and 22-8 victory over Brick Township.
   The Neptune Township Board of Education actually announced the dedication of the track to Ms. Wilson back on Jan. 27, but the timing wasn’t exactly right.  So it waited 10 months to formalize the proceedings.
     A lot of other things have been askew, timing-wise, in the track and field world.
     Look back to the close of the 2019 world season and you’ll see that Wilson – champion of the Diamond League, the global circuit of biggest-time meets – was ranked Number One in the world in the 800 meters that year, a campaign that concluded with the Tokyo Olympic Games due up the following summer.
   Only an upsetting third place in the 800  – a race she was favored to win – at  the season-concluding World Outdoor Championships in Doha, Qatar, spelled less than perfection to her 2019 campaign.
   But – as the world would soon learn – this Covid 19 thing would turn the globe upside down and downside up.
   Biggest-time sport – from the Tokyo Olympics on down – necessarily self-revamped.  As the pandemic raged – with its ghastly global toll – most everything – sports just a minuscule phase of it all - was put on hold. 
  Thus, calendar adjustments forced reassessments in virtually all the things
we’d all considered phases of normalcy.
   It was a miracle that the Tokyo Olympic Games – still dubbed the 2020 Games but staged a year later – were held at all.
   Certainly, Ajee’ Wilson was there in Japan to have it out with the world’s best 800-meter runners.  But certainly, too, she wasn’t at her best, either.  At the USA Trials in Oregon, it had taken an all-out sprint down the final straightaway to claim the third and final spot on Tokyo-bound Team USA.
 The gold medal in Tokyo thus went to an American teammate and fellow Central New Jerseyan, Athing Mu of Trenton, in the American record time of 1:55.21, the silver to Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, the bronze to USA’s Raevyn Rogers.  Wilson, surely not at her sharpest, had bowed out in the semifinals.
  But bygones will surely be bygones.

By Elliott Denman

   Two-time USA Olympian (1976-80) Clark Todd Scully Jr. died tragically in a 
trailer-truck accident in Big Island, Bedford County, Va. on Sept. 6th, 2021, a week shy of his 73rd birthday.

   One of America's greatest stars in the racewalking discipline of track and field,
Todd Scully - as he was known to all in his sport - excelled at all distances from 1 mile to 50 kilometers (31.1 miles) but is often best recognized as "the Roger Bannister of racewalking,"for his historic feat of walking one mile in 5:55.8 at the 1979 Millrose Games at New York's Madison Square Garden.

  Just as no runner had ever broken the "four-minute barrier" before Britain's Dr. Bannister ran 3:59.4 at Oxford in 1954, no racewalker had ever covered the mile in official circumstances under 6 minutes before Scully did it that epic night at
"the Garden."  And he did this shod in his famed trademark "Hush Puppies," ultra-light street shoes. 

  Todd's greatest racewalking successes were at these "sprints" but he went on to place 29tth in the 20K walk at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games (after staying up with the lead pack much of the way) and then be named to the 20K team at the 1980 Trials but then sit out the Moscow Games in that boycott year.

  Todd was born in Princeton, NJ, Sept. 13, 1948 and went on Somerville, NJ High School and Lynchburg College in Virginia.   He joined the Shore Athletic Club of NJ in his high school days - first competing in the club's famed Lake Takanassee Summer Series - and remained a lotyal member of the club - which has produced an array of other Olympians - for the balance of his competitive career.

 He also competed for the All-Army team and for Team USA in multiple international events.  He earned National AAU individual gold medals eight times, at distances from 1 mile to 40 kilometers   Twice a competitor in the Pan American Games, he placed fifth at the Mexico City 20K in 1975 and third at 20K at San Juan in 1979.  Beyond all that, he represented his nation at five editions of racewalking's World Cup global team championship event.

  After his competition days, Scully was a highly successful coach at Virginia Tech University.   In his latter years, he worked the Big Island farm he'd acquired four decades earlier.   For many years, too, Shore AC hosted the Reilly-Scully Day Road Races in Long Branch, NJ, honoring both Scully and Bill Reilly, the Long Branch High School alumnus and 1968 USA 3,000-meter steeplechase Olympian.

 "To be certain, Todd was one of the greatest of Shore AC athletes, and we've had a lot of great ones, in all branches of

track and field," said Ray Funkhouser, the former Shore AC president and himself a national champion racewalker. "We've been totally saddened to hear of his passing,"

"Rest in peace, dear teammate Todd."

BEAUTIFUL ARTWORK DONE BY MARY BETH MCDONNELL OF AJEE' WILSON.
​WELL DONE, MARY BETH. MANY THANKS.