PORT JERVIS, N.Y.—At 9 a.m. on a cloudy Sunday, 300 people stood at the ready on Jersey Ave in Port Jervis, New York.
At the word, “Go!” the runners at the front were quickly off the mark, followed by the rest of the pack, including moms with strollers, and kids out to enjoy a walk through the city. The 31st Delaware River 5K Run and Walk had begun.
John Faggione, organizer of the event and the director of recreation in Port Jervis, has been helping coordinate the event for the last 28 years. With around 50 volunteers—many of whom are students of the local high school—supporting him, it went off without a hitch.
“We’ve got a lot of support in the community. It’s not easy to do something for 31 years. So we’re very lucky to have a great crew of people that come out every year,” Faggione told The Epoch Times.
The race is the brainchild of school superintendent John Bell and his brother Bob, who came up with the idea in 1994. After competing in a number of races around Orange County, the siblings decided to start one in Port Jervis.
Organizing the first race was a struggle, Bell told The Epoch Times. “People in town didn’t even know what it was, and even the police and the DPW with the coordination they’re like, ‘You want me to do what?’ So I had to explain everything to them, every street corner, how to block it, how to patrol it. And it all just started as a dream.”
In order to ensure the race was not just successful, but also something that would become its own tradition, the Bell brothers had to put in a massive effort.
“We went to every race we could think of all over Orange County, and handed out race applications to everybody who was running those races to get them to come. And that’s how we kind of got on the map.”
Bell added the race to the Hudson Valley Grand Prix—a series of races organized by the Orange Runners Club. That move put the Port Jervis 5K on the list of must-run races for enthusiasts all over the tri-state area.
This year, Zach Hase took first place in 16 minutes 26 seconds. “I feel great, kind of surprised myself a little bit. So it’s a good feeling,” he told The Epoch Times at the finish line.
Hase, a student at the University of South Carolina Aiken, was cheered on by his parents, who live in Blairstown, New Jersey.
Sean Mayer had run a 10K race just the day before, but that didn’t stop him from competing in Port Jervis.
A Lafayette, New Jersey, native, Mayer, who is part of the Orange Runners Club, told The Epoch Times that he started running as an escape from his job as a quality manager, “It gets you outside. It makes you feel good.”
Lia Lemish, who came in third in the 10- to 12-year-old girls category, said that while she felt sore after the race, it was still a lot of fun.
Lia, who’s in the 4th grade, was very surprised with her third-place finish: “I was not running the entire time, I was running and walking and I wasn’t even trying to win.”
Bryce Shannon came in second overall, completing the race in 18 minutes and five seconds. No stranger to running, Bryce is a track star at Port Jervis High School. This was his fifth year running the 5K, and he had won it for the last three years.
“I’m happy with what I did. I had a race yesterday, so I wasn’t going for time today,” Bryce told The Epoch Times.
Local runner Kristin Trovei, who lives in Port Jervis and works as a court clerk in the Deer Park Court, was running in her sixth event. This time, however, she had her son for company, even though he quickly outran her.
Trovei thinks the community event is really fun and a great tradition. “I like that everyone comes out, people are lining the street, they’re very supportive of the people that are running.”
