Those who like to share their passion for running will not be able to share it this summer. Road Scholars is a program in which students’ train rigorously during the spring to prepare for a thirteen mile marathon in July. This program usually starts in March, but by the beginning of March 2017, the cancellation of the program was announced. An email was sent that stated that the CARA Road Scholars program would be canceled in order to begin forwarding activities towards the CARA Go Run program.

The marathon consisted of students exercising and preparing to train at seven in the morning. Two dedicated runners from PMA never complained about training sessions because they felt they had a home and a family in the program.

Juniors Odalis Torres and Kiara Balleza, who had a passion for running expressed their disappointment when they found out that they won’t be able to continue running during the summer.

¨In Road Scholars there is acceptance and love, especially when you guys have the same thing in common; a passion for running,¨ said Torres, who ran for the track team and the cross country team here at PMA.

In their participation in Road Scholars, runners from various schools were categorized by their speed. By the end of the marathon, a medal was given for completing the thirteen mile run.

¨I remembered the first time I got a medal; I felt like a winner. I felt that anything was possible because I never ran 13.1 miles without stopping! It’s such a disappointment that Road Scholars was cancelled because you can’t find good programs that actually encourage you to be self-motivated in not only in yourself, but what you do with that in order to succeed more,¨ said Balleza, who has been running with Road Scholars since her freshman year.

Although they are not running with Road Scholars, they will continue running during their free time since track was also canceled for the 2017 school year. They are looking forward to the beginning of the cross country season in order to work and motivate each other on what they love most: running.