BELLEFONTE — Herbie’s Home “Town Loop” will have a different look this year.
The 17th annual 4-mile run/walk will be held on Saturday, Aug. 5, in Bellefonte. For the first time, the course will start and end at Bellefonte Area High School’s Rogers Stadium.
“We aren’t changing the route; we’re changing the start and finish,” explained Kim Gasper, one of the race organizers. “We were always hoping that we could do that. The year that we were going to do that, COVID hit and we wound up with two years of a virtual race. Last year, the date conflicted with a football schedule that couldn’t get moved.”
Now, the change has been made.
The race is held in memory of Jeremy Herbstritt, a 1998 Bellefonte Area High School graduate. He and 31 other students and professors were killed during a mass shooting on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg.
Later that year, Herbie’s Home “Town Loop” was created by Jeremy’s family and friends to remember and honor him. The family also wanted to give something back to the community that gave so much to them in their time of grief.
According to Gasper, Bellefonte school board president Jeff Steiner suggested including the stadium a few years ago.
“Mr. Steiner had done the race and he said, ‘Why don’t you do this on the track you helped build?’ We said that we were trying to,” Gasper said with a laugh. “We were finally able to secure the date and we want to finish the race on the track.”
The new track at the recently renovated Rogers Stadium was helped along by proceeds from Herbie’s Home “Town Loop” and is named the Jeremy Herbstritt and Lt. Jonas Martin Panik Track.
“In the very beginning, we wanted to help be able to build the track where the community could gather and walk or run,” Gasper said. “The school should be the center of the community. … That’s how we feel.”
Since the track has been successfully built, funds from this year’s race will benefit the VTV Family Outreach Foundation’s VTVCare program and a local family in need. VTVCare is an endowment fund that provides financial assistance to mass shooting survivors nationwide to help cover long-term trauma-related medical and mental health care expenses that insurance and other governmental programs do not cover.
The Virginia Tech mass shooting took place 16 years ago, and gun violence has increased since then. Gasper noted that Bellefonte Area High School went into lockdown when a threat was made earlier this year.
“We just experienced that in Bellefonte and I will tell you, for me, it was one of the more terrifying things that has ever happened. It wasn’t a drill. … It turned out to be a hoax, but they don’t treat it as one when you’re going through that. A lot of people were scared,” Gasper said.
The race will also benefit Class of 2022 BAHS graduate Haley Popovitch, who suffered severe third-degree burns over more than 50 to 60% of her body after tripping and falling into a fire pit at her home. She was life-flighted to Lehigh Valley Burn Center for extensive treatments.
“It’s been a really long road and she’s still in the hospital,” Gasper said.
According to Gasper, helping others is what the race is really all about.
“We want to give back to the community that really supported the Herbstritts when they were going through a really rough time after Jeremy passed away,” Gasper said.
The cost of the race is $25. Those interested in taking part can register online at runsignup.com.
