By Jacki Donovan
Staff Writer
ISU’s Sports Management Department held the twentieth annual Bengal Triathlon last Friday and Saturday, in collaboration with students throughout the athletics program and members of the community.
The Bengal Triathlon consists of a 700-meter swim, a 13-mile bike ride and a three-mile run in that order. These three events are split between the two days, with Friday’s swim times seeding the start time for the races that follow on Saturday.
A longtime mainstay for Pocatello’s athletic community, the triathlon also serves as a capstone project for ISU’s sports management students, who handle a majority of the preliminary planning and onsite labor for the event.
For primary organizer Dr. Caroline “Smitty” Faure, a professor in the Department of Human Performance and Sports Science, this is ideal. The triathlon is her “brainchild,” as she puts it, designed to give her students a complete preview of a day on the job.
“My goal is to provide students with the chance to coordinate a large-scale event from start to finish,” declared Smitty. “A lot of the time, they don’t always realize just how much goes into planning one of these things until they’re actually doing it.”
And there is plenty to do. This year, the daunting effort is headed by junior sports management major Cici Espinoza, for whom the triathlon’s laundry list of organizational demands seemed to be absolutely no sweat.
“Smitty has us running number distribution, sign-up, answering questions,” confirmed Espinoza.“But it’s all gone smoothly so far– I’m not fazed, to be honest.”
It’s a good thing Espinoza has it handled, too. This year, the triathlon brought in no fewer than 510 participants from 12 states and Canada.
After the swim, The Bengal had the chance to talk to one of these participants.
“I’m shooting for faster than an hour and ten,” said senior exercise science major JD Heberlein. “But I guess that’ll depend on how cold and windy it is tomorrow morning.”
The weather is one thing, but triathlete safety is another. It’s a long racecourse and a lot of racers, which means Smitty and her team had to make contingency plans of their own.
“We are working with police, the Idaho Department of Transportation, and even Bannock Search and Rescue,” said Smitty. “Risk management is as important as anything else in planning this kind of event, and it’s important to the service learning aspect of our program, too.”
Even with the worst-case-scenario in mind, the sense of community throughout the triathlon was reassuringly palpable. Smitty estimates that the work of around 150 students went into putting the event together.
But even this impressive figure doesn’t account for Bengal sportsmanship off the clock. Espinoza and her team, for one, had some unexpected help.
“The softball team uses the gym super early in the mornings,” Espinoza said as she gestured to the sturdy retaining wall of cardboard boxes behind her. “And before they left, they set up all of our race material for us.”
This collaborative spirit followed organizers and athletes alike throughout the event. We managed to catch up with Heberlein after the race: he had good news.
“I was right on it, down two minutes from last year,” grinned Heberlein, who finished the triathlon in a brisk one hour and nine minutes, placing 10th overall. “I was really impressed by everyone’s performance– and it was great to see so many people out here cheering each other on.”
For Heberlein and his 509 competitors, the opportunity to gather, compete and cheer together is priceless. No better runner’s high than a shared one, right?
What the racers are not privy to, though, is that this is all according to Smitty’s master plan: “I want my students to know it is possible to hold an event which is organizationally on par with the Iron Man triathlon; you just have to be meticulous about it.”