Bill Degnan 5K a time for friends to honor late teacher and coach
Seventeen years ago at a time of the year with snow on the ground, the community of good people from Cape to Woodbridge over to Frostburg University and up to Rhode Island and anyplace else Bill Degnan had hung his hat was rocked with the news that 43-year-old teacher and coach Bill Degnan had died from a virus that attacked the lining of his heart two weeks earlier.
Bill was a ripped, fit former shot put and discus thrower with no body fat, a great diet and no observable vices short of chronic and unrelenting niceness toward students and friends. Kids came first with Bill - it was his instinct - and they always knocked adults out of the preferred position in a conversation.
Ali Coning and Shanel Dickens were recipients of the Faith in Human Spirit Award presented at Cape's 2012 graduation and again before last Sunday's 5K race. Ali and Shanel are great friends and “Degnan type kids”; he would have loved coaching them. And if he were alive he'd be 60, and that is hard to imagine.
A turnout of 160 appeared on the track June 24, many of them connected to Bill Degnan in some shape or fashion.
The race was won by 18-year-old Justin Skavery in 18:36. Cindy Conant, 51, was the women's winner in 20:14. Margaret Colvin, 51, won the women's masters division with a time of 22:11.
John Walker, 48, was the men's masters winner in 19:09.
The 10-13 boys' race was stacked with quality at the top as Blake Hundley in 20:52, DJ Farren in 23:17 and John Best in 23:29 garnered the first three places.
A Wiggins family reunion also invaded the race, from grandchildren to aunts and uncles who ran, including Cape graduates Matt, a radiologist, and sister Cheryl, an audiologist, so Doctor, “Can you hear me now?”
Guy Wiggins, who ran a 17-minute 5K the summer of 1988 on no training, came back 25 years later still on no training and ran 30 minutes. That is the life cycle of the non-training runner.
The next race is the Beach Paper Firecracker 5K on Saturday, June 30.
