Vancouver Thunderbirds School Run Club

Implementing structured school sports at your school is more difficult than ever this year. With competitive school seasons being cancelled, the Vancouver Thunderbirds are here to help through the RUN CLUB CHALLENGE. Whether your school does or does not have a Run Club in place, we can help!

Why Participate in the Run Club?

The Vancouver Thunderbirds Track and Field Club is supporting local schools by providing the opportunity for students to participate in a no-hassle, easy to organize Run Club. The Vancouver Thunderbirds will support schools in the set up and running of their Run Club so that little staff time is required.

Build camaraderie and a school culture

An opportunity to contribute to our community

The Run Club is pleased to have partnered with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank to provide participating Run Clubs the opportunity to fundraise for this great community cause

Safety

Improve Physical Fitness

Improved Self-Confidence

Emphasize goal setting

Flexibility:

While schools are welcome to build comradarie and to work towards a common goal by running together either after school or in class, the activity can be done from anywhere, whether home or school, meaning coaches/teachers don’t have to schedule class or extracurricular time to provide this opportunity to students.

RUN CLUB CHALLENGE

Using a format created for our own club members during the 2020 spring season, we have created a FREE fun, competitive (if you wish) Run Club Challenge to inspire student-athletes to stay active.

The Run Club can operate both in-person and virtually. Run Club students are encouraged to log each Kilometre they run, walk, or wheel. As they upload their daily kilometre total to our safe and secure form, they contribute to the goal that your classroom or school has set for itself. (our club chose to run across Canada).

Our programming is infinitely customizable so whether your class is going Coast-to-Coast or simply across the city, we can create an interactive challenge that engages and inspires students to help their team cross the finish line.

The Goal of this initiative is to take some or all of the burden off of coaches and teacher sponsors to create engaging opportunities for their students in lieu of the sports seasons that would normally take place. The Thunderbirds will provide as much or as little support as you need. We can help create and implement a customized KM Challenges for each participating school/group by:

  1. Designing courses/routes for your Run Club.
  2. Providing suggestions/guidance on how to set up and run the program whether virtually or in- person
  3. Providing an online platform through which members of your RUN CLUB can input and track both their progress as well as that of the RUN CLUB and clubs from other schools.
  4. Individual totals can also be tracked (if desired) with Thunderbirds providing commemorative ribbons for athletes who achieve KM Milestones (25km, 50km, 75km… 250km).
  5. Provide Thunderbird athletes to motivate your school’s RUN CLUB members by attending one or more of your in-person practices.
  6. Provide an end of year final run event in the form of the Subway Kids’ Mile. All Run Club runners will have a free entry into this event. The event will either be virtual and/or “in person” depending on conditions at the time. As well as providing the focus for the end of each school’s Run Club, the Kids’ Mile provides the opportunity for Run Club members from different schools to come together (in-person and/or virtually) to celebrate the end of the Run Club; their accomplishments; as well as the end of the school year.
  7. Provide tracking of cash donations submitted to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank and track how much your school has raised: no need to count money or accept food donations.
  8. Recognizing, on the Run Club website the schools raising the most funds both in absolute terms as well as per student. Students interested in challenging themselves further can participate in the Blueshore Financial Longest Day Road Race, a 5k or 10k organised by the Vancouver Thunderbirds and run at the same time as the Kids’ Mile. Parents and staff are welcome and encouraged to participate in these longer events.