The Lansing Area Running Community

The Lansing area has a rich running community that not every town can boast.

On a mission to understand why, I asked Dick Hoekstra about the origins of the Playmakers Race Series. It's interesting to know how it started and grew, and to see the names of runners who graced the leaderboards as they are significant in the history of our running community.

The Beginnings of the Playmakers Race Series

by Dick Hoekstra

The Playmakers Greater Lansing Race Series was the brainchild of Haslett High School graduate, Ryan Kelly.

Kelly was in his mid-20s, working for Farm Bureau Insurance, serving as an assistant cross country coach at Haslett High School and running fast in some road races in the Lansing area in 2001. He noticed that a lot of the top runners would come out for the Ellen's Race 5K in July and the Dinosaur Dash in early October.

I believe during an interview for a Lansing State Journal story after winning one of those races, we began talking about how it would be great if the top runners would compete against one another in more than just those couple of races. I don't remember who added what specifically, but eventually between Ryan and I, we came up with a list of the larger races and a point system that would encourage especially the faster runners in the area in each age category to compete against one another more often.

But another main goal was to encourage participation. We knew it could be a goal of some to, for instance, earn a single point or two or three in the race series or see how many of the events they could run.

At the time, I was one of the weekly running columnists for the Lansing State Journal and coordinated who would write each week. I also wrote stories about each of the larger races and typed in names of the top three (or five for larger races) in each age group for publication in the LSJ.

Therefore, after consulting with my LSJ bosses, I felt I could approach Playmakers to ask if they would sponsor the race series with the promise that the races and events would be promoted and reported about, and the top points would be listed in the LSJ during the year, and especially prior to the awards presentation event at Playmakers.

I also agreed to tabulate the points after each event, and post them on the Playmakers website.

After presenting these ideas to Brian Jones, who has overseen the events that Playmakers has been involved with over the past 20 years or so, he and Playmakers owner, Curt Munson, agreed to sponsor the series.

The original seires included the Race for the Place 5K, the Mason State Bank 5K, the Cooley Law School Race for Education 5K, Bob's Run for Listening Ear 5K, Ellen's Race 5K, Lake Lansing Labor Day 8K (before Playmakers Autumn Classic was reborn the following year), The Dallas Lincoln Memorial 10K, the Capital City River Run 10 mile, the Dinosaur Dash 5K, and the Cold Turkey Trot 5k.

Ryan Kelly had to win two of the last three races in the fall of 2002 and finish higher in the other to overtake Roland Hensley and capture the men's overall title by 43 points to 42.

Kelly tied Eric Stuber for the second place behind Chris Hughes in 2003 and then took second to Stuber in2004 before moving to Texas.

Eric Stuber would go on to take the male overal title six times in the first 14 years of the race series and was the top point getter in nine of the 10 years he was a masters (over age 40) runner.

Nikki Norris earned the female overall title in 2003 and 2004 before moving to Texas.

Christine Vincent in 2005 won her first of six female overall crowns in the first 14 years.

The closest title race ever was when Becca Rudey Schlaff (with 108 points) edged Shannon Audretsch (107 points) and Emily Johnston (101 points) for the female overall crown in 2011.

To further increase participation beyond those who would compete for age group awards, Great Harvest Bread for years sponsored a card for free bread to those who completed a certain number of race series events.