Running Club is a Plus: Children of All Interests Will Benefit from It

We were looking at the list of the many activities that Sean Driscoll’s Parks and Recreation Department offers and one that jumped off the page was the Cummings School Running Club for students in grades 3-5 that has been under the direction of teacher and coach Warren MacPhail.

We’re not surprised that the Running Club has been a tremendous success under MacPhail’s leadership. With children today becoming less active (although we’re not so sure that’s true in such a sports-minded town as Winthrop), parents should truly consider the Running Club as an introduction to running.

Warren will work individually with each child to develop the proper running form and improve their strength, endurance, and speed. MacPhail will also test each runner’s weekly gains in time during the five-week program.

We would note that Warren MacPhail is a world-class tri-athlete, a former WHS and college track star, and the Winthrop cross country and track coach for many years. Altogether Warren has more than 25 years of experience as a competitive runner and coach. For our children to have an expert like Warren MacPhail coaching them at this early age, improving their physical  fitness and boosting their confidence for the price of $50 spread over five weeks of training, amounts to a real deal. (Or as our late, long time publisher Andrew P. Quigley would say, “Boy, that’s cheap at twice the price.”)

Sean Driscoll deserves some credit too, because he personally knew that Warren had a great wealth of running knowledge and  that he could be a tremendous influence on the development of physical fitness habits of our third-to-fifth graders in the town.