Running Culture
How Shane Myers is Building a Club and a Movement
Words: Camilla S, New York New Jersey
When I stepped into PS.166’s auditorium at the beginning of after-school, I was greeted by the sight of 40 excited kids in bright blue t-shirts. One walked around with a clipboard –a young assistant–, another spread the “cheese touch” (a “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” inspired version of tag), and two others tried to steal a bag of Starbursts. In the seats one read a comic book, others chatted with their friends, while another claimed her new Kick’s nickname, “Go Go.”
Soon after, all bundled in ear muffs, gloves, coats, sweaters, and knitted hats, they ventured out into the cold for a run. The back of their neon blue shirts all read, “Kennebec Kicks Club.”
Shane Myers is CEO and founder of the club. Her favorite part of the race is the kick, when runners increase their pace at the very end of a long race: “You’re out there and it's grueling and you're pushing and then you see the finish line. It’s you versus you and… you're like, ‘am I going to hold this pace? I feel like I'm dying now. Or am I going to kick? Am I going to empty my tank and give it all, and give everything I have, and kick?”
Despite all her experience, she says that it's a special moment every time: “you learn something about yourself… you realize, ‘I have so much more power than I knew’”.
Myers is an avid runner, has run marathons and triathlons, and still does today. Love for the sport was passed down to her daughter who went from cheering her mother on to racing herself and, eventually, to desiring her own team to run with.
That, Myers told me, is how the club started. As a small little group that she organized for her daughter and her friends, for free. Just for fun. She never would have guessed it would grow to become a thriving business and her full-time job.
Beforehand, Myers was working full-time as a lawyer. It was only after repeated insistence that she finally sat down with a long-time runner’s parent to see how much the club could make if she were to turn it into a business. The numbers made it clear she had something but she was still mulling it over. That very night, she received an email from a parent from a different school. The parent, who had seen Myer her running with the Kicks, asked if Myers would be willing to coach her daughter and her daughter’s friends.
Overnight, Myers said, they legitimized the business: Kennebec Kicks Club. It is called “Kennebec” in honor of the river where she met her late husband and her daughter’s middle name.
The first registration day at their first official school program, PS.166, she described being in disbelief of the amount of signup. Then for the next session, in the winter, they doubled. In the Spring they sold out. For this year’s winter session “in three minutes Kicks completely sold out before anything else. Before dance, before soccer, before anything. It's us.”
The program is now in eight different schools, with 82 coaches and 1,000 kids, spanning New York, New Jersey, and –starting in the Spring– Connecticut. The craziest part of their rapid growth has been the lack of advertisement.
“People just come to us because they see the runners out in the streets,” Myers said. “They see us at races, they see us around, and they just want to be part of it.”
When I was running in the club, we would run through the streets of New York’s Upper West Side and be greeted by cheers of encouragement and people telling us, “Oh, I’ve seen you guys before!”
“Everyday we have so many emails,” Myers said, passion evident in her voice.
“It's a movement of…kids being healthy and running and getting out there and… the camaraderie that they have… it's so fun.”
The word-of-mouth advertisement has only been one aspect to their success.
Unlike other sports, the club, and running in general, is adaptable. Running requires no space to be rented or bought, nor does it require expensive equipment, the kids just go out to the streets or the park and run. No space or permits needed.
Unlike other running clubs, Kicks caters to both boys and girls at a wide range of ages. The club’s “create groups” can be formed independently by kids and their friends, even if they go to different schools or their schools don’t offer the program. More than half of the Kicks who graduated from PS.166 last year are still running together in “create groups”.
Unlike middle school Cross Country programs, where races are limited to a maximum of around two miles, Kicks is currently training some eighth graders to run a half-marathon this coming Spring.
The coaches are another difference. In Track and Field and Cross Country programs in general most coaches, Myers said, “used to be runners… [they] sit in one place and are like, ‘alright, give me another lap!’” Kicks coaches, on the other hand, are all actively running and racing. Myers gave the example of one coach who recently ran the New York Marathon saying, “she’ll wear her medal in and all the kids are like, ‘yeah!’, you know, wearing it, taking pictures… it gives them… something to aspire to.”
Some kids come into the program already knowing what they want as their Kicks nicknames, they see the runners with their nicknames printed on the back of their shirts and want to be a part of it.
“It just feels cool for kids to belong to something,” Myers says, “and I think that the names make them feel like they belong to, this, like, cool secret club where they get to be someone else.”
It is this sense of community that Myers says is her favorite part of the club.
During races it’s, “watching the kids cross the finish line… That feeling of accomplishment that they feel… The joy… Everyone's so happy they cheer each other on… Going through the finish line everybody's going nuts.”
During the practices when she is out with a pack of runners and then she sees, “another coach and another group of runners from a different school, and seeing over there another group of runners and another coach… and I'm like, ‘we are taking over the city!’”
Even when just walking through the streets, she described dropping her daughter off at school and she recognized a kid from the program, one she had never coached herself. She didn’t even know who she was. Yet she knew him. They were connected.
“The unity of it all,” Myers said, “It’s really powerful.”
Camilla S is a New York based participant in Youth Media Forward: meet the New York New Jersey participants here