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Africans—eight of the top ten male finishers at the most With a leg up from Sidney Baptista ’05, runners from all walks of life recent Boston Marathon were from Kenya or Ethiopia—but and levels of experience came together last fall on behalf of racial jusamong amateurs the sport remains overwhelmingly White. tice in Boston. An entrepreneur, marathoner, and host of the podcast One of the barriers, Baptista says, is representation. “In my Fitness in Color, Baptista put together the city’s More Than a Run 5K neighborhood, you can see a basketball player, you can be a road race. The virtual event—participants completed solo runs, then rapper. Representation matters.” He started Pioneers Run logged their results on a digital platform—raised more than $50,000 Crew to help normalize running in the Black community. “I for three area organizations: Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy, a wanted to share the joy running brings me,” he says. tuition-free charter school committed to culture-based education; The team’s name pays tribute to the New York Pioneer Violence in Boston, a nonprofit that serves families affected by urban Club, founded by three African American men in 1936 as trauma; and Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. one of the country’s first integrated athletic organizations. “As runners, we love to be together,” says Baptista, who in 2017 Among its biggest stars was Ted Corbitt, Olympian, marathon founded Pioneers Run Crew, a club centered in Dorchester, the champion, and grandson of enslaved people. predominantly Black and immigrant Boston neighborhood where From a gathering of a few diehards, the Dorchester group he grew up. When the pandemic curtailed club activities, members has grown to include a revolving cast of some 500 athletes. It found themselves cut off from that camaraderie. The loss took on hosts free weekly training sessions, is active in neighborhood special urgency amid the summer’s reckoning over the killings of clean-up events, spearheads fundraising initiatives like the unarmed Black people in the U.S. The murder of Ahmaud Arbery SIDNEY BAPTISTA ’05 IS BRINGING More Than a Run 5k, and has launched an athleisure wear struck especially close to home: He was gunned down by white RUNNING—AND company that aims, says Baptista, “to build equity and ownermen while jogging. “People started asking, ‘How can we help?’” says COMMUNITY ship in the Black community.” The club’s pre-pandemic group Baptista. “‘What can we do as runners in the push for racial justice?’” EMPOWERMENT— runs through the neighborhood routinely brought people out At Williston, Baptista was known as a sprinter, setting school TO HIS BOSTON onto their porches to cheer. Its activities have gained notice records at the 100-meter and 200-meter distances and anchoring NEIGHBORHOOD well beyond Dorchester, and recently PRC was written up in a record-setting 4-x-100-meter relay team. He proudly recalls the BY KEVIN MARKEY Runners World magazine. assembly when Athletic Director Mark Conroy called him “the Not long ago, Baptista received a letter from a young club fastest man in Williston history.” He took up distance running in member. She wrote, “When you think of a runner, who do 2014, in part to help manage the stress and moments of self-doubt you picture? If you asked me before May of 2018, I would not he felt after leaving a comfortable career at consulting giant Pricehave described anyone who looks like myself. The spring day when I first joined waterhouseCoopers to start his own business. “Williston, college, PwC, there Pioneers Run Crew marked the start of my journey as a runner. At that moment was always a path,” he observes. “And suddenly there wasn’t.” Within a year, I became part of a community committed to uplifting one another in all aspects he ran his first marathon. of life. Yes, we run together. Yes, we like personal records. Yes, we like to have While pounding out training mileage around Boston, Baptista encountered fun. But what fuels us is our love for our community.” very few Black runners. Distance running for years has been dominated by 42 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL
