SCRANTON -- As the strike continues in the Scranton school district, student athletes are trying to find ways to continue to practice.
Scranton school district teachers are on strike over issues including salaries and health care.
The strike, which began Friday afternoon, means no extracurricular activities and no sporting events.
“I was just saying to my mom that it was weird not to run after school, so it’s kind of like if we have a meet when we go back, we’re not going to be as ready as we were before,” said Scranton sophomore runner Katie Shea.
Monday night, members of the Scranton cross-country teams showed up to run more than three miles as part of a special Scranton Running Company event, which also featured a visit by two-time Olympic champion runner Nick Symmonds.
The high school cross country coaches, who are teachers, told their athletes about the event and encouraged them to use the run as an opportunity to practice together.
“He texted us all so that we could come here today and get our run in now that we’re on strike and we can’t run,” said Scranton sophomore Mary Kirchner about her cross-country coach.
“The leaders of the team, the seniors have been getting together and organized practices. We recognize it’s something that has to be done so we’re trying to work around it as best as we can,” said Bertin Stuckart, a Scranton High School senior.
Union members say the Scranton School District strike could last up to three weeks and if it does, these young athletes say they will miss three meets.
“You can come to stuff like this, but it doesn’t happen all the time so you can’t work hard. You can’t work hard as a group basically so you're running on your own and training as hard as you can, but it just gets depressing when you can’t run an actual race,” said Nate Campbell of Scranton.