By Bob Fulton
Kerry Green was inducted into the Pittsburgh Marathon Hall of Fame in May, an acknowledgment of his lifetime achievements as a distance runner.
But long before that, Green had gained acclaim far beyond western Pennsylvania, not so much for his running, but for what he did while running. He juggled.
Kerry Green during a Boston Marathon in the early ’90s
Crowds along the Boston Marathon route would invariably erupt at the sight of Green juggling tennis balls as he traversed the 26.2-mile route.
“It was 1993, and I was approaching 40,” said Green, a 1978 IUP grad who worked as a cardiac rehab specialist in Mansfield, Ohio, before retiring. “One of the joys in running is you do PRs—you’re setting a personal record. And, suddenly, I realize I’m not hitting PRs anymore. So what can I do to keep this fun and enjoyable?”
Green thought back to his youth and how he’d taken up juggling as a hobby, keeping different types of balls, raw eggs, and even bowling pins in constant motion. So on April 19, 1993, Green stood at the Boston Marathon starting line in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, three tennis balls jammed into a fanny pack. When he reached the town of Natick, 10 miles in, he pulled out the balls and began juggling.
“It started out as kind of a joke,” said Green, who now runs only recreationally. “But when you heard the people—it was almost like you had a volume control. They’d seen maybe 200 runners go by. Suddenly, here comes this guy smiling and juggling balls. They went nuts.”
He juggled for only five or six miles, off and on, but that was enough to attract the kind of attention usually reserved for runners at the head of the pack.
“Every year that I crossed the finish line at Boston, the Associated Press would beam out a photo,” Green said. “For years, they’d show the guy with the laurel wreath. But at some point, the newspapers got tired of that, and they started to show the juggler. It just turned into a circus of fun, really.”
Kerry Green during his Pittsburgh Marathon Hall of Fame induction last May
That’s not to suggest Green wasn’t a serious competitor. He twice finished Boston in a personal-best 2:26, and he clocked a sub-3:00 time in five consecutive decades, gaining admittance to the exclusive 5DS3 (five decades sub-three) club.
“I crossed the finish line in 2010 in two hours, 58 minutes,” Green said. “At that point, there was only one other guy who had run under three hours at Boston in five different decades. Now, there are like five of us who have done that.”
Green had hoped to inaugurate a 6DS3 club once the calendar flipped to 2020, but it was not to be.
“Father Time kind of taps you on the shoulder, and you start to slow down,” he said.
Green figures he’s finished about 60 marathons, the first while he was still competing in cross country and track at IUP. He’s just one of dozens of elite distance runners that coaches Lou Sutton and Ed Fry turned out over the years.
The Pittsburgh Marathon Hall of Fame has honored many of them, beginning with charter inductees Don Slusser ’73 and Tammy Donnelly Slusser ’87 in 2009. Don Freedline ’78, Mary Alico Russell ’86, Eric Wilkins ’81, John Harwick ’54, M’60, D’90, Mindy Sawtelle Zottola ’05, Christina Skarvelis Simpson ’86, Eric Shafer ’91, and Sara Raschiatore Zambotti ’03, M’04 have since joined the Slussers.
But Kerry Green has them all beat, at least for sheer entertainment value. While the others just ran toward a finish line, he juggled his way there.