Joins 14 former CAA athletes of the year and 10 All-Americans

Charlie Hurt, former William and Mary distance standout and current Ragged Mountain Racing athlete, was recently selected as a member of the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Silver Anniversary Men's Cross Country Team. The team, selected by a panel of current and former coaches, recognized the top runners in the conference from the past 25 years. Click here to read more about this honor.

Former Kent State Runner Joins RMR

Seth Hutchinson, former Kent State distance standout (14:14 5k and 30:04 10k) is the most recent addition to the Ragged Mountain Racing Team. Seth will be will be focusing on the 10k - HM distance. Click here to read more about him.

Former Big-12 rivals now part of same team

Darren Brown, former-Texas distance star (3:58 mile), and his South Region rival, Mike Hendry (3:46, 1:50) from LSU, have both joined RMR. Brown will be coached by Jason Vigilante, and Hendry by Brad Hunt. Click here to read about them.

Agree to offer our athletes shoes and equipment

In keeping with our non-traditional model of athletic sponsorship, we have secured support from Ascics (in addition to Brooks, Mizuno, and Nike). Our goal, as mentioned elsewhere on this page, is to allow our athletes to choose whose shoes they wear while allowing them to still be a part of the group. We are thus very grateful to Ascics, Brooks, Mizuno, and Nike, for supporting our attempts at changing the traditional track club sponsorship model.

It's official - we are incorporated!

Just over a month ago we registered as a non-profit corporation in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and we recently received notice that our application was accepted. So, we are now officially a corporation (non-profit status pending - this simply takes longer). Why does this matter? Because any donations we receive will be tax deductible. Also, another nice perk is that Google administrates email address and Google App accounts for all non-profit organizations, free of charge. So all of our athletes, directors, etc. will have Gmail accounts with the raggedmountainracing.org address, and a common platform which to share calendars, online training logs, etc. Not earth shattering but kind of cool nonetheless...

See the link above or click here to formally apply

Four months after their first meeting, we at Ragged Mountain Racing are excited about our inaugural year and are ready to start accepting applications! This is a work in progress, but after securing sponsorship from Brooks, Mizuno, and Nike, we felt strongly that it was time to go after the most important piece of the puzzle - the athletes. We're not officially "going public" until April and are currently relying on word of mouth, but if you've heard about us and you're interested, curious, or just want to know more, don't hesitate to contact us.

Support from Brooks, Mizuno, and Nike will supply training and racing gear for at least 12 athletes

In a departure from the traditional racing-team model, Ragged Mountain Racing has asked several major athletic companies to co-sponsor the group. The rationale? It's better for the athletes.

"We were really torn about who to approach first regarding support" said Bob Thiele. "In the end, we really wanted to do what was best for our athletes. This arrangement has several advantages. First, it gives the athletes choice. If you ran in Nike in college, you can stay with Nike. Second, it strengthens our group, in that we don't rely on one source of funding. And third, it is congruent the ethos of our group, namely that this is a collaborative effort."

He continued - "We are incredibly thankful for Brooks, Mizuno, and Nike's cooperative support. We didn't know if they would find "co-sponsorship" to be acceptable. In effect, we asked them to place the sport above themselves, and they did it, no questions asked. In the long run, this is better for everybody."