Cross-country coach fundraises for season with 559-mile run

Head cross-country coach Beau Wielkoszewski is going the distance — quite literally — to raise funds to make future seasons of the sport possible at Bigfork High School.

Wielkoszewski plans to cover 559 miles, equivalent to running the length of Montana, during the 10-day Across the Years Race in Phoenix beginning in late December. He hopes to raise $10,000 — $1,000 of which will cover his race entry — while the remainder will fund the high school cross-country team’s travel, bus driver fees, race entry fees and coaching stipends, among other expenses. He also coaches a group of middle school runners who train alongside the high school athletes. Cross-country is one of five unfunded sports at the high school, meaning the school allows the athletes to represent Bigfork, but doesn’t provide any financial support for those teams.

“The district, through really no fault of their own, has to make choices on what they can fund and what they can’t,”Wielkoszewski said. “You can’t, for instance, not fund math.”

But rather than lose sports such as golf and swimming altogether, the coaching staff has opted to raise the funds themselves.

“It’s more important that we have an unfunded team than no team at all,” Wielkoszewski said. “Running is a sport that attracts certain tropes of kids that don’t want to be on the football team or the basketball team. It’s just a different type of student usually.”

Part of the fundraised dollars go toward coaches stipends — $2,133 for the head coach position and $1,984 split between the two assistant coaches, Jeremiah Brown and Holly Wielkoszewski. Coach Samantha Modderman also volunteers her time for the team. It’s a little “awkward” to be fundraising for one’s own salary, but the coaches aren’t exactly getting rich off their stipends.

“When you do some of the math for these coaching positions it works out to $1 an hour,” he said. Team parties or end of season dinners also come out of the coaches’ pockets since they aren’t authorized to use fundraising dollars for those activities, he said.

There have been talks about allocating a portion of the school’s general fund for coaching stipends to lessen the fundraising burden, but that never gained traction, Wielkoszewski said.

In previous years, cross-country has supported itself by seeking donations and hosting a 5k race during the summer that regularly brought in $2,500-3,000 for the team. Occasionally, individual donors have written checks to cover entire seasons and coaches themselves have paid for unfunded sports out of their own pocket. But fundraisers take a lot of time and resources to organize and aren’t a guaranteed success, so this year, Wielkoszewski decided to try something out of the ordinary.

“How do I get $9,000 without having to sell brownies every week?” Wielkoszewski asked.

“I’m good at a couple things, I’m good at IT … the other thing I’m really good at is running for long, long distances.”

He hopes the Across the Years race itself will serve as a rallying point for donors and also help other unfunded teams. Anything Wielkoszewski generates beyond his $10,000 goal will be distributed among the sports that don’t have district dollars at their disposal including cross-country, soccer, boys wrestling, girls swimming and golf.

Wielkoszewski began training for his 10-day gauntlet about three weeks ago and runs two to three hours every day after school at the Montana Athletic Club in Bigfork. Since he’s traveling to Arizona for his race, Wielkoszewski is focusing his training indoors to prepare his body for the warmer temps. If these lengthy sessions weren’t enough, sometimes he’ll train wearing a weight vest for an added challenge.

“It’s all about the fine line between adding mileage and getting trained up and not causing a catastrophic injury,” Wielkoszewski said.

Across the Years isn’t Wielkoszewski’s first foray into ultra running — which is defined as any race longer than the 26.2 mile marathon. He once ran 100 miles in 21 hours and completed the six-day Across the Years race in 2016.

But 10 days is a big step up.

“I’m definitely nervous about, can I do 10 days? I’ve done six days. It’s way more effort to do as you increase the distance,” he said. “At the last race, I was walking slower than you can possibly imagine. I felt like I should have gone to the hospital with the way my feet hurt. It’s not for the feint of heart, these races.”

The monotony of the course also presents a challenge, since he’ll be running as many laps as he can on the one-mile course.

To propel him through the long days of running and walking, Wielkoszewski will rely on a playlist curated by his team.

“I have some kids that are great DJs,” he noted.

His plan is to run 57 miles on day one, and then walk until it’s time to turn in for the night. Over the next nine days, he’ll split his time between fast walking and running. Wielkoszewski is hoping to front-load his mileage to compensate for the final days of the race, when he’ll likely be too tired to manage 50-plus miles each day. Interested parties can track his progress online, which will be monitored by a chip timing system. Whether Wielkoszewski runs the length of the state, or falls short of his goal, he hopes the race can bring awareness to Bigfork’s unfunded sports.

“I do these extravagant and long races out of challenge for myself,” he said, “but it’s a way for the kids of see that the can achieve a lot more.” ¦

BREAKOUT:

Support the Bigfork Cross-country team by donating to their Runfunded campaign at www.patreon.com/runfunded or by writing a check to the Bigfork Cross-country Program which can be dropped off at the high school Follow @runfunded on Facebook and Instagram. Follow Coach Beau Wielkoszewski’s progress online at www.aravaiparunning.com/across-the-years beginning Dec. 28 through Jan. 7.

Editor Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at (406) 758-4433 or editor@bigforkeagle.com.