H12 Sunday, July 24, 2016 | The Repository | CantonRep.
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How Bad Do You Want It?
Runners take off as the start of the 2015 Pro Football Hall of Fame 5K Gold Jacket Series National Championship in Canton.
Gold Jacket 5K finale is last in series
By Tim Botos
Repository staff writer
This will be the second
and last year for the Pro
Football Hall of Fame 5K Gold
Jacket Series National Cham-
pionship road race.
The event, which is part of
the NFLs kickoff weekend,
will be Sept. 10. The 3.1-mile
race, which debuted last year,
was to be the culmination of
a yearlong series of qualifier
races held in cities across the
country. Top finishers then
earned an expenses-paid trip
to Canton to compete in the
National Championship.
The premise, though, never
quite caught fire.
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PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME ENSHRINEMENT FESTIVAL
It really boiled down to
two things, explained Jim
Chaney, executive director
of Aprils Pro Football Hall
of Fame Marathon, the Gold
Jacket Series and other Run
To You Racing events. It
was a little more challenging
to run these events (in other
cities) remotely than wed
imagined. And the Hall of
Fame has so much else on its
plate now, with the (Hall of
Fame) Village.
Hall of Famer Dan Dier-
dorf greeted racers at the
finish line of last years
National Championship.
During qualifying races
leading up to that event last
year, these Hall of Famers
greeted winners in qualify-
ing events:Dan Marino,Paul
Warfield,Anthony Munoz,
Franco Harris, Floyd Little,
Joe DeLamielleure, Dan
Hampton andAndre Reed.
But a 5K race in September
wont disappear.
Chaney said a kickoff race
of some sort still will take
place in 2017, as part of the
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Enshrinement Festivals
annual activities. Pulling
the plug on the Gold Jacket
Series, he added, has helped
him focus more attention on
the April marathon, which last
year attracted only 334 run-
ners to the full 26.2-mile trek.
So far, about 1,600 have
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entered the 2017 marathon,
and he expects that number
to swell once the race begins
full-scale marketing in the fall.
Sixty percent of the run-
ners entered have never been
to Canton, he said.
The Hall of Fame road races
have been through several
incarnations since they pre-
miered with the 1986 festival.
There were the 2-mile and
5-mile races, which attracted
a few thousand runners.
There was the Pigskin Run.
Then, there was the Gold
Jacket event.
Nik Schweikert, a former
runner at what was then
known as Malone College,
has run in all of those events
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at one time or another and
has won some, too.He was
second in last years Gold
Jacket Series 5K National
Championship.
I knew I wanted to stay here
in the Canton community,
said Schweikert, a physical
education and health teacher
and coach at Canton South
High School. I love it ... so you
just start looking at all the local
races. Its great because you
TIM MCGRAW
start to see the same people;
you get to know some of them. ALBUM: Live Like You Were
And the Hall of Fame races Dying
always had prize money. SONG: How Bad Do You Want
It?
Reach Tim at 330-580-8333 or
tim.botos@cantonrep.com.
On Twitter: @tbotosREP
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