Stump Day

The following was written today by former UC Davis and current Sonoma Academy coach, Chris Puppione. Sarah Sumpter (nicknamed Stump) ran at Healdsburg HS and at UC Davis for Coach Puppione. She was inducted into the UC Davis Hall of Fame in 2020. She sadly passed away at the age of 25 on September 21st, 2015, due to a brain tumor which was originally diagnosed in 2010. September 10th became known as Stump Day, as that was the day she was diagnosed with cancer.

Here is my interview LINK with her following her victory at the Stanford Cross Country Invitational in 2007.

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Ten years ago, I sat at my desk and wrote a story about a girl who taught me how to fight with grace. I was weeks away from marriage, had no children yet, and I thought I was at the end of my coaching road—burned out, hollowed out, done. But I had Sarah’s story inside me, and it demanded to be told.

Back then, I didn’t know how much more there was to live. Didn’t know that love could grow even deeper, that two children would arrive like twin sunrises in my life. That I would find my way back to coaching—not to chase wins, but to chase meaning. I didn’t appreciate how much her voice, her lessons, her fire would echo so loudly a decade later.

Sarah was a storm and a sunrise. She was stillness before the gun and fury once it sounded. She faced the thing that should have broken her and stared it down with a smirk and a spike-laced heart. On the day they told her about the tumor in her head, she didn’t crumble. She ran. She ran through it all.

That’s what Stump Day is.

It’s not about survival. It’s about defiance with dignity. It’s about running your guts out not because it’s easy, but because it matters. It’s about giving the best you have—whatever that best looks like—because that’s what Sarah would have done.

So today, my athletes will run for her. I coach for her. I parent for her. I live for her. And I tell the story. Again. And again. And again.

Because the run continues.

We champion the grind.

And we do not waste good time.

#stumpday

https://empirerunners.wordpress.com/.../do-not-waste.../