Ryan S. Brandenberg
On Sunday, May 3, 40,000 runners took part in the 36th annual Blue Cross Broad Street Run.
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During the two days prior to the race, more than 1,000 Temple community members received custom Temple Runs Philly T-shirts and other swag at the Pennsylvania Convention Center's Health and Wellness Expo. (Ryan S. Brandenberg) -
Temple students running posed before starting the race down Broad Street. (Joseph V. Labolito) -
Allison Boyle, Class of 2017, sang the National Anthem prior to kickoff. (Joseph V. Labolito) -
The weather was perfect as 40,000 runners made the 10-mile trek through Main Campus to the Navy Yard. (Joseph V. Labolito) -
Among the runners were more than 600 Temple alumni and many more students and staff members. (Joseph V. Labolito) -
Runners passed the Liacouras Center on their way to the finish line. (Joseph V. Labolito)
The weather was perfect for a race on Sunday, May 3, when 40,000 runners made the 10-mile trek from W. Fisher Avenue in North Philadelphia to the Navy Yard for the 36th annual Blue Cross Broad Street Run.
Among the runners were more than 600 Temple alumni and many more students and staff members. More than 200 Temple alumni, family, friends and community members came out to support participants at two official cheer stations—at Polett Walk on Main Campus and in front of the Center City campus.
On Main Campus, volunteer cheerers received doughnuts, coffee, Temple T-shirts, noisemakers and free parking at one of the best spots on the course for watching the city’s largest race. Members of the Diamond Marching Band played and Hooter the Owl high-fived runners as they passed under a giant banner that read “Temple Runs Broad Street.”
“I loved seeing that sign,” said Caitlin Kummeth, Class of 2015, a strategic communications major in the School of Media and Communication who ran the Broad Street Run for the first time this year. “I was a proud student at that moment. I thought, ‘This is my school; all these people are on my turf.’”
During the two days prior to the race, Hooter and members of the Temple University cheerleading team energized the Health and Wellness Expo at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. More than 1,000 Temple community members received custom Temple Runs Philly T-shirts and other swag to wear on the course.
Temple’s many connections to the Blue Cross Broad Street Run were highlighted in the media before, during and after the race.
The university sponsored NBC10’s telecast of the competition, the first time in its 36-year history that the race was broadcast in its entirety. NBC10 featured Temple in mile-by-mile descriptions of the race; a prerace special, Ready, Set, Run, which included a segment with advice from Cory J. Keller, an assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery and sports medicine at Temple’s School of Medicine; coverage of the prerace expo; reviews of the best spots to watch the race; and postrace recaps.
Other prerace coverage that focused on Temple faculty, staff and students included the following:
An in-depth conversation with Howard Palamarchuk, director of sport medicine at Temple’s School of Podiatric Medicine, on WHYY-FM’s NewsWorks Tonight. For more than three decades, Palamarchuk and his students have treated runners’ feet and ankles at the race’s finish line.
A CBS3 piece on a local cancer survivor who ran with Jeffrey C. Liu, the Temple School of Medicine otolaryngologist and surgeon whom he credits with saving his life.
A story at philly.com’s Sports Medicine blog about the Boyles, a Philadelphia family of runners with deep Temple ties (including undergraduate student Allison and Temple Health employee Michele).
A front-page story in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the long winter’s impact on race training, which featured quotes from College of Public Health sport psychologist Michael Sachs.
- Michael Mastroianni and Hillel Hoffmann