Kristian Rowan moved a lot of water last summer in Seattle.
That was during the 2018 Special Olympics USA Games – where the swimmer from Monongalia struck gold and also paddled home with two bronze medals.
She was still trafficking in water Sunday, on an 85-degree afternoon on Madigan Avenue.
Only this time, the H20 was ice-cold and capped in bottles. “I’d rather be in the water today,” Kristian said, “not handing it out.”
“You know it,” seconded her friend and fellow Olympian Angela Mick, a swimmer with a Fort Knox array of gold she’s won in county and state competition over her years as an athlete.
Kristian and Angela were distributing the hydration to the runners and walkers there for the cause.
The occasion was the inaugural “Run to Mundy’s Place,” a fundraiser for Special Olympics West Virginia. Mundy’s Place is the venerable Madigan Avenue bar that has been part of the proceedings from its First Ward address since 1949.
Co-owners Keith Summers and Mark Thalman have a long association with Special Olympics in Mon and the Mountain State.
“This is something we can do,” Summers said.
Besides hosting and sponsoring the 5K race and walk, Mundy’s kicked in an additional money gift, while also donating 10% of its sales for the day.
“So many good volunteers, so many good sponsors,” Dan Erenrich said.
Erenrich, a retired athletic director from Morgantown High School, organized the event and mapped out the course with Ed Frohnapfel, who coaches cross-country at University High.
“We wanted to make it interesting,” Frohnapfel said.
Competitors negotiated all those First Ward peaks and valleys, which went from Madigan to White Park and back to Madigan.
A total of 70 people laced up their running and walking shoes for the event. One of them was runner Jason Barclay, who said he was happy to lend out his arches for altruism.
“This is Special Olympics,” he said. “I always race for good causes.”
When he isn’t putting one foot in front of the other for Uncle Sam, that is.
Barclay is a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard and recently returned from an overseas deployment, in fact.
Which, as it turned out, afforded a little weather snobbery (good-natured) for thermometer-infused day. “You call this hot?” he asked, grinning. “I just got back from Kuwait.”
