HELP WANTED
According to the Google AI overview of why a twenty-fifth anniversary is silver, it is because “silver symbolizes the strength, longevity and the elegance of a long-lasting relationship.” That sounds right to me for marriages and for the Platte River Fitness Series. By the time school begins in mid-August, we will have completed fourteen events with only five remaining in our 2025 season. We will turn the page on this calendar year before we know it and find ourselves standing at the threshold of 2026 and our silver anniversary. Not bad for something I had planned to last a couple of years. I don’t know if 2026 will be a true inflection point but it is a good time to unpack and repack the way the PRFS is carried into the future. This is a kind of progress report and a request to our community.
Earlier in the year, I asked you to complete a survey to assess where we are, where we need to go, and how we might get there beyond the first twenty-five years. Bringing your voices into the process really mattered to me. The most prescient decision I felt needed to be made was whether or not the PRFS was still useful enough to continue, and your answers gave me my answer. Sometimes organizations or initiatives try to hold on too long. They exceed their usefulness, but the founder or leader cannot let them go. I don’t want the PRFS to outlive its usefulness. You told me loud and clear as one respondent put it, “Quitting is not an option.”
The next step was to confirm that we have continued support from Great Plains Health and West Central District Health Department. Together, they provide the infrastructure we need to keep the PRFS operational. Sustainability is a beautiful thing, and we wouldn’t be here without them and the Rec Center who provided the administrative support for the first twenty years. We really can’t move forward without these entities.
The next task was to invite two representative groups that will soon meet to review the survey results and offer their wisdom about what adjustments or refinements we might make. The Board of Directors and the newly formed focus group will be invaluable in this process of co-creation. For historical context, the Board of Directors was formed as a requirement to become an official non-profit (501c3) which was necessary once we began doing online registration. The Board of Directors has served nearly ten years, and amazingly, these seven individuals recommit year after year. I love them because they are considered, thoughtful and most importantly, open-hearted in their leadership. The board members who will play a role in the process are myself, Brock Wurl, Tanner Pettera, Bob Barr, Mark Cullinan, Doris Davis, Malinda Hayes and Kisha Arnold. Their devotion to the PRFS is remarkable.
Recently, I sent out an invitation in our newsletter inviting people who would like to be more involved in the future planning process to volunteer. The newly formed focus group will meet several times before the end of the year to review the data from the survey and to offer ideas and help make decisions about any changes we might make. They will be tasked with doing so from the broad perspective of considering ideas that will be of the most benefit to the most people. These volunteers represent different genders, different age groups, different abilities and different roles and points of view. What they share is a commitment to be mission and values focused. They understand that the PRFS is not a business, it is not a race company, it isn’t really about racing. It is a values-driven collaboration trying to do good in the world by using racing in an innovative and creative way to build community and improve well-being. Your focus group representatives are: representing the athletes, Jan Wright, Nichelle Nichelson, Bob Veal, Casey Roy, Reece Foust and Sharon Sewald; representing athlete/volunteers are Sage Merritt and Wayne Wallace; representing athlete/sponsors are Lyndsey Graves (who I might add, is coming all the way from Kearney to help!) and Zach Merritt; representing the race directors is Jayna Schaaf and Lane Swedberg and representing the volunteer team is Alyssa Fabik.
For both the board review and focus group, volunteer Shreya Agrawal Kanade will be there as the author of the survey whose incredible insights and expertise will help us clarify our direction and navigate a course that is true.
Finally, there is you and I. I have captained this ship from the beginning. I never, not for one moment, ever forget that it was the combined efforts of many people that has allowed for the longevity we enjoy. None of this could have happened without people willing to step up and help me. This is where you all come in; the PRFS community. In order for the PRFS to continue, I am going to have to do something that is incredibly hard for me. I am going to ask for help. I’d rather run a hundred hill repeats followed by a marathon!
We have operated with a very, very small group of volunteers for decades. To continue to serve the community, we need to increase the size of our crew. One of the essential services that the PRFS provides is timing the races. Alyssa Fabik has been timing since she was in high school, as has Nelson Jett, and Gerry Berglund has been at the finish line from the very first triathlon. They are all busy professionals with very busy lives. They are not at every race but they are at the vast majority of them. We’ve been lucky to have had the help of my daughter-in-law and granddaughters the last couple of years, but the busy-ness of their lives is accelerating. We need to expand the timing team so we can be confident that this essential function is covered without undue burden on just a few people.
My daughter Sage came aboard as we transitioned to the “internet age.” For those too young to remember, during the early years, there was no online entry, no website, no social media, just a roll of stamps, some flyers and a whole lot of paper entry forms. Sage helped us move into the modern age. She manages the website, manages the entirety of the online registration and results process and makes sure the newsletter gets published. The hardest thing she manages is her internet-phobic, technology-skeptic, social media-concerned mother. It would be incredibly helpful to have other “techy-types” trained to help with the tasks of opening and closing races and posting results. A little set of extra helpers just in case. Doris Davis has been in charge of the “holy grail” since the very beginning. She is the keeper of the precious “points spreadsheet.” Again, how helpful would it be to have someone else who knows how to curate that document?
This group of long-term volunteers are priceless and the work they do to operationalize the mission of the Platte River Fitness Series is bigger than the word “essential.” I ask so very much of them, and they continue to say yes with hearts as vast as the universe. As with my role, however, if for some reason they need to say no, there may be no one who knows how to step into their volunteer “running shoes.” That definitely makes the PRFS less sustainable.
We also need to consider our race directors. They cycle through a bit faster than this core crew of volunteers, but many of them have served for over a decade. They depend on volunteers to host their races, and each is reporting that they are having a harder and harder time find enough volunteers to lend a hand. Individual races need volunteers. When there are not enough volunteers, races go away.
To sustain our community and the PRFS, we are going to need others in our community to come forward to help. I have to take the first step and get comfortable with asking and with letting go. I hate asking anyone for anything, but the PRFS is more important to me than my discomfort. I can continue to captain the ship, so to speak, but there needs to be a bigger crew to keep us on course, including the possibility of a co-captain. Of course, athletes want to participate, but many of you bring spectators along, or have friends and family who might be willing to join the crew and learn how to help so that the work isn’t left to a small group of crew members who alone know how to steer the ship.
Leaders like me (although I am working really hard to do better, I promise) create a terrible dilemma in an organization. If they disappear, no one knows how to do the work they do. You see it in business, in government, in non-profits and even in families. I knew it to be true but ignored it until I recently heard the story about the leader of a program for children who joked about the fact that if she got killed in a car crash, no one would know how to do her job. I may have said something similar in the past. Tragically, not long after making the comment, she was killed in a car crash. No one knew how to do her job and the chaos that ensued left her beautiful work in disarray, serving no one. The steps we are taking now are to ensure that this sad tale does not happen to the PRFS. Please think about people in your circle who may want an opportunity to do some life-giving volunteer work that matters and please hold me accountable to keep asking.