Joan Bennett asked that Creek Road Runners be made aware of the upcoming memorial service, as Creek Road Runners were such a part of the second half of the life of her late husband, CRR Bob Bennett.
A service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the life of CRR Robert “Bob” Bennett will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 9, at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, 276 South College Avenue Newark, Delaware.
The 2020 pandemic Olympic Games came to a close on August 8, 2021. Now we can look forward to the 2024 games in just three years!
For many, the extra year of training and preparation for these games was a hindrance; for others, it was a blessing in disguise. There were certainly a lot of surprises along the way. It seems the rest of the world is catching up with the USA in many sports.
In particular, the men’s track and field team, with a few notable exceptions, did not have the broad success that most of us expected. The USA women’s T&F team performed better, relative to their competition.
Champion gymnast Simone Biles brought a stark new awareness of the mental aspect of this level of competition, dropping out of the gymnastics team competition and a few of her individual-specialty apparatus events due to her unreadiness mentally.
CRR Sam Parsons competed in the World Championships in Doha in 2019.
How difficult, both physically and mentally, it is just to get to the Olympic stage was highlighted in a pre-Olympics article in the New York Times, which focused on this subject and featured CRR Sam Parsons.
Parsons, who trains with Colo.-based Tinman Elite and was competing for a spot on the German national team in the 5,000m (his mother CRR Christina Parsons is German), had been battling a nagging injury leading up to the German trials. Unfortunately, with little more than a lap left in his quest to qualify, he had to pull out of the race—his Olympic dream deferred.
The good news, father CRR George Parsons tell us, is that his son is recovering well physically and is staying positive, despite the disappointment.
Another almost-made-it was Michaela Meyer, who won the NCAAs this year but finished fourth at the Olympic trials. Meyer was a former UD student of CRR Bill Rose.
Yes, the world does seem to be catching up to the USA in many respects. Could this be the natural evolution of globalism, or is there something behind this?
CRR Matt Robinson
We’d like to think that the efforts of (self-proclaimed Creek Road Runners CEO) CRR Matt Robinson are making a difference for other nations that may not have the coaching expertise that we enjoy in this country. He literally coaches Olympic coaches.
This effort is funded by the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Solidarity Fund, which designates money generated from Olympic broadcast rights to sport development and education programs around the world.
In the runup to the Olympic Games this summer, Robinson was interviewed by a University of Delaware UDaily reporter for the following article.
CRR Sam Parsons, son of CRR George Parsons and CRR Christina Parsons, is ramping up his training in an attempt to make the German national team for the 2021 Summer Olympics. His mom is German, so Sam, who also speaks fluent German, can compete for her home country. The key, however, is qualifying, which gets tougher every four years.
Recently, Parsons clocked in at 13:23.3 in the 5,000m race at the American Track League/Sound Running track meet in California, just a second off of his PR, set in 2019. Qualifying for the Olympics is based on the best of either a qualifying standard—at this distance, 13:13.5—or on a points basis (performances gain “points”). In the case of this latest meet, Parsons earned 1156 points—1126 “performance points” based on his finishing time and an additional 30 “place points” for his 4th place finish in the race. As a result, his average increased to 1138 points, ranking him 40th in the world at the 5K distance.
Parsons, who trains and runs for Boulder, Colo.–based Tinman Elite, will compete at the German Nationals on June 5. Creek Road Runners is proud of its international running superstar, a Newark native, and wishes him sehr Glück.
In an exclusive article published in the News Journal this week about the most influential Delawareans in seven categories, CRR Charlie Riordan was one of the 15 individuals highlighted as being most influential in science and technology.
Not just a runner, Riordan, who joined the University of Delaware faculty in 1997, “oversees the university’s research office, six university-wide research institutes, and ‘core’ facilities.” Under his leadership, “more than 1,500 faculty, staff, and students have been approved to return to their research work since early June. Riordan is an internationally renowned inorganic chemist” (and all-around nice guy).
Creek Road Runners congratulate him on this recognition.
For CRR Jim Fischer, it can seem like a bit of a redemption story, though not of his own choosing.
You see, Fischer had coached the University of Delaware’s DI men’s cross-country and track-and-field teams for three decades in his previous coaching life. That came to a gut-wrenching end in 2011, as UD erased its men’s running program over the course of three years while he was at the helm. Something about Title IX, despite all the good he was doing for the young athletes, most of whom happened to be great students as well.
Coach Fischer at a UD track meet in 2011
“It really hurt me,” Fischer admitted. “It was not only that that’s what I loved. It was also that it wasn’t a valued program to [the UD administration], and that hurt even worse.”
Well, after having had his job eliminated at UD, Fischer took positions with Delaware Technical & Community College and then Sanford School, respectively, before getting an opportunity with the Ursuline Academy—an all-girls’ school most famous for having produced WNBA superstar Elena DelleDonne. In the five years Coach Fischer has been at Ursuline, the school has won the past three girls Division II state cross-country titles, displacing the perennial juggernaut Tatnall School. Prior to his arrival, Ursuline hadn’t won that coveted state title since 1998.
Now, Coach Fischer has been honored as the 2020 Delaware Coach of the Year for these latest accomplishments, just another in a series of awards for one who is already a member of the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame.
A native of Minnesota, Coach Fischer has been a Creek Road Runner, as well as a member of the Pike Creek Valley Running Club, since coming on the scene in Delaware back in the ’80s. He has always been an advocate for running and racing and has for decades now been holding community workouts on Tuesday nights, helping runners of all abilities to improve and/or meet their goals.
Hearty congratulations, Coach, from Creek Road Runners!
CreekRoadRunners.org 