ACU’s Students’ Association and ACU alumni are gearing up for the Dallas Marathon taking place on Dec. 8th.

SA has been working hard to prepare for this year’s marathon, recruiting runners and creating a shirt for participants to wear at the race.

J.P. Ralston, SA treasurer and senior finance accounting major from Plano, regularly runs in the event.

“We have a tradition of creating free shirts for ACU participants in the Dallas marathon every year,” Ralston said.

Students and alumni alike have shown growing interest in the event.

Dylan Benac, SA President and senior political science major from Boerne, has also participated in the event.

“We have around 90 people signed up this year,” Benac said.

ACU’s new logo gave way to a new marathon shirt with the redesigned Wildcat logo front and center to encourage runners to show up and run for ACU.

“I’m sure with the new logo and everything, they will make sure to pick up the shirt before they run,” said Ralston.

SA has worked the past several years in tandem with the alumni office in the Dallas area to get involved in the marathon.

“It’s been going on for a couple of years and we work with the alumni office because, not only do we give the free shirt to ACU students who run, but we also ship at least 24 shirts to ACU alumni who are going to be running as well this year,” said Benac.

The shirts provide a piece of the ACU community among the 20,000 other runners in the Dallas Marathon.

“It’s not a requirement to run while wearing it, but it’s really cool to run and see people wearing these shirts, whether it’s a graduate student, alumni, someone you know and go to school with, it’s one of the few purple shirts in the marathon,” said Benac.

He said the hope is for ACU community’s commitment of supporting and encouraging to carry over all the way to the Dallas Marathon.

“It really means a lot when you’re running and around mile 18 or 19 you get a couple people throwing the Wildcat at you, it helps; it’s really cool to see the ACU community coming outside and screaming for you,” said Ralston.