The Ugly Sweater Fun Run

There’s nothing better than waking up on a chilly weekend morning, putting on a sweater and… going to run a mile at school? Although the concept of going to school during the weekend seems bizarre, several families showed out for Silver Creek’s second Ugly Sweater Fun Run hosted by the Silver Creek Leadership Academy.

On Saturday, December 10 at 10am, students and their families lined up, ready to run one mile around the school, the holly jolly crowd clad in Christmas cheer. Once the run started, folks were off!

The Ugly Sweater Fun run has been an event at Creek for about two and a half years now. The school’s Leadership program leader Carrie Adams came up with the idea to host a fun run to fundraise money for seniors and their Capstone projects. Although Adams came up with the idea, Sophomore SCLA teacher, Julie Forbes, organizes the event with her class.

When planning for the event the first time, Forbes brainstormed ideas on how to stretch the event planning across a whole semester for her students. She says that each year, she becomes better at leading her students through the process.

“The race has always been student run but we’ve gotten a little bit better each year at breaking the students up into different committees.” Forbes says.

This year, the class of 34 SCLA students has been broken into eight committees. Each committee focuses on a different part of the event planning. From race logistics to sweepstakes, there’s a group for it!

Dylan Ross, a sophomore in Forbes’ class, is a member of the non-race logistics committee. His responsibilities include managing the event’s electricity, set up, and more.

“We’ve really had to think outside of the box for some things but in the end I think it’s all worked out,” he says.

The run was only one mile long. The course started by the parallel parking in the front of the school. Participants were to run to the track, around it twice and back to the starting point, which was also the end point, where a bubble machine and a happy group of volunteers were waiting. In total, the race didn’t last more than 30 minutes.

After the race was done, runners could either leave or stay for the rest of the event, and partake in various activities such as giant connect four and snowflake making, as well as eat delicious food.

The Ugly Sweater Fun Run worked with local businesses as vendors for snacks. There was The Wolf, a delicious taco truck, parked at the event, as well as Landline Donuts being sold for two dollars each. If participants wanted a warm drink, they could also head over to the latte booth run by the school’s librarians Kristen Holtz and Tina Fredo

The event also had several fun activities for families to do. Several school clubs had tables set up advertising to current and future students. For example, the Art Club was doing face painting. There were also Capstone booths for the seniors to get the word out about their projects to the community.

At the end of the event, there was a sweepstakes drawing with several winners and prizes. All who registered for the race were entered once into the lottery but additional entries could be added for the price of one dollar. Many of the prizes included gift cards, coupons, and the top three winners even got some swag to take home.

Several participants and volunteers all had a blast as the run, rendering it a success. “At the end of the day, it’s been pretty fun and I’m really glad I got to do this,” Dylan Ross says.

Overall, the Ugly Sweater Fun Run was a huge hit with the community, as it was last year and as it probably will be in years to come. In the end, the event wasn’t really a race but instead a community coming together to support the local schools and students.