Good Sports: Ray Knight program helps high school athletes run the Two Cities Marathon

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- When thousands of runners deed the streets for the Two Cities Marathon this weekend, 48 precocious schoolhouse students volition basal retired successful agleam orangish shirts, acknowledgment to a programme aimed astatine giving young athletes a accidental to compete.

The Ray Knight Program, named aft longtime Central Valley moving manager Ray Knight, selected students done their precocious schoolhouse coaches to person escaped contention entries, transportation, and caller moving shoes.

"For Ray Knight to enactment our assemblage and our athletes, sometimes they don't person these opportunities," said Johnny Sanchez, the Roosevelt High School way coach. "For them to enactment america and this community, we consciousness truly blessed."

One of the schools progressive is Roosevelt High, wherever students volition tally the 5K race.

For freshman Galdino Estevez, it's his archetypal race.

"I'm trying to get a bully PR (personal record)," Estevez said.

Knight, who leads the Sierra Challenge Express moving group, visited Roosevelt's signifier this week to promote the athletes.

His goal: amusement students however acold moving tin instrumentality them.

"It creates a peculiar energy," Knight said. "Hopefully these kids volition transportation that on, and erstwhile I'm agelong gone, they'll retrieve that this was the programme that got them going."

With astir 50 students participating this year, organizers are already readying to grow the programme successful 2026, giving adjacent much young runners the accidental to transverse the decorativeness line.

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