A total of six elementary students have each run at least 100 miles at Riverbank Language Academy (RLA) since the inception of the RLA Running Club this past September. The newest members of the 100-mile club are third grader Leonel Padilla with 131 miles, fourth grader Erick Jimenez with 118 miles, and second grader Roman Soriano with 112 miles. All three recently received their medals of accomplishment for running over 100 miles.

These boys join fourth grader Julian Soriano, second grader Luke Walton, and second grader Owen Hauselmann, who received their 100 mile medals earlier this year at a school assembly.

The school started a running club to inspire and promote running as a healthy activity. The goal was for students to collectively run enough miles to cross the United States.

According to Run Club officials, it has proved to be such a popular activity that the students have run more than 7,500 miles to date, averaging 1,200 miles a month or 34,091 laps around their playground.

There are now 230 students who have run more than 10 miles and 76 students who have run more than 25 miles each.

The next school assembly will likely see three to five more students ready to get their 100 mile medals, said officials. Students run before school, during PE, and Friday afternoons. The progress is tracked with a barcode on each student’s identification card that is scanned after completing each lap on a course around the playground. A software/app, StrideTrack, created specifically for school running clubs, generates a report on the miles of each student, each class, and the overall miles run by all the students at school. Parents and students can monitor their progress daily through the application.

The students enjoy the competitive spirit, seeing how many miles they can run.

The Riverbank Language Academy is an English/Spanish immersion K-8 Charter School with 565 students in the Riverbank Unified School District.