Temple’s North Broad Physical Therapy center hosts annual ‘Spooktacular 5K’

The North Broad Physical Therapy Center hosted its fourth annual Spooktacular 5k on Polett walk on Thursday.

Sixty-five runners, who were mostly students from the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program under the College of Public Health and community residents were encouraged to dress up in costumes to celebrate Halloween. The runners came dressed like zombies, bananas, safari explorers, and even an iron lung. 

The profits from the run go toward funding the operational costs for the clinic, which provides physical therapy services to North Philadelphia’s underinsured community residents, McClellan said. 

The 5K raised almost $4,000, Kruth wrote in an email to the Temple News.

“This is the first year we’ve had zombies on our run,” said Kevin Kruth, a graduate student at the College of Public Health and the race’s coordinator.

Kruth said this is the first year the NBPTC has partnered with the Temple University Police, who dressed up as zombies and motivated runners to finish the race. 

Zombies were positioned at different checkpoints along the race to chase runners who were each provided with 2 flags at the start of the race. Zombies would attempt to grab flags from passing runners.

“The zombies made it a little more challenging,” Nick Casazza, a graduate public health student, said. Casazza won the race and finished with one flag.

Casazza said that Bill McClellan, a runner and a graduate student at the College of Public Health, finished two minutes before Casazza but had lost all his flags by the end of the race.

Casazza and McClellan, along with graduate public health student Jake Vargo, all work at the NBPTC and enjoyed the opportunity to get more involved in their community

“I think the main thing was that we got to support something that we all believe in and care about,” Vargo said.

 Allison McCracken, a graduate public health student and NBPTC worker, said that fundraising from events like this does pay off. The money allows NBPTC to purchase specialized physical therapy equipment.

“I think once we’re working in the clinic we can really see the benefits of how the fundraising pays off,” McCracken said. “We’re helping real people who deserve to get these services that they can’t normally afford.” 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said that Kevin Kruth, Nick Casazza, Bill McClellan, Jake Vargo and Allison McCracken are graduate students at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. They are graduate students enrolled in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at the College of Public Health.