With a roughly mile long course set up around the campus at Escalon High School, an assortment of characters – ranging from an astronaut to an eagle to the always-popular Dracula – took off for the Zombie Color Fun Run on Friday, Oct. 23.
Presented by the Art and Music programs at the school, the 5 p.m. event was a ‘rain or shine’ run and, luckily, the rain that dampened the area through much of the day Thursday tapered off early Friday and the sun came out, providing a bright backdrop for the event.
“We mapped out what worked best,” said art teacher Erin Northcutt of setting the route, avoiding some excessively muddy areas on campus.
“They could run as many laps as they wanted,” added art teacher Jewell Kelley, “and the course was about a mile long.”
The art and music departments took over the event from the now-disbanded Escalon Educational Foundation and utilized it as a fundraiser for the art and music programs at the school.
Students active in Art, Photo, Digital Media, STEM, and Music clubs on campus ran the color stations, with pink, yellow, green, orange and blue powder all featured. The Zombie Color Fun Run official T-shirt was designed by Taylor Kjellberg, who is an advanced art student and serves as president of the Art Club on campus.
“We had 140 register and about 100 showed up,” Northcutt added of the participants.
Among them were mother and daughter Liliana Calderon and Andrea Fuentes, who came dressed for the occasion, Calderon in skeleton attire and with colorful headgear, Fuentes with a badly damaged eye, courtesy of makeup.
“My brother’s in high school but he didn’t want to do it so I said I would,” explained Fuentes, a 2024 EHS grad.
Also taking part were the mother and son team of Debbie and Travis Parks.
“I hadn’t had an excuse to dress up for Halloween in a while,” said Travis, noting his Dracula costume was from a few years ago.
For Debbie, she came as an eagle, paying homage to the famous Southern California bald eagles Jackie and Shadow, who were made famous via livestream.
And though the heavy rain on Thursday did make organizers a bit nervous, both Kelley and Northcutt feel the color run went off well.
“I think people really enjoyed the face painting,” Northcutt said, with art students providing a variety of make up for free to those that wanted to get a little more into the ‘Zombie’ spirit. “The kids did a great job.”
Kelley said based on the runners coming in from the course, most chose to go the ‘color’ route, though ‘no color’ was an option as well.
“The sun came out, there was no dust in the air and it was perfect weather for a run,” Northcutt added. “I think everyone that came out had a great time.”
