Brtalik helps jumpstart Oakland running event

After working with Baltimore's Corrigan Sports Enterprises and moving to Oakland, Gene Brtalik (M.S. 2002) stayed on with the organization and helped found the Oakland Running Festival. The event is to be held in March and more than 2,500 people have signed up for the festival, the first event of its kind in the city in more than two decades, organizers said.

Brtalik said he believes East Bay runners will be relieved and gratified to have a marathon "in their own backyard," rather than having to go to San Francisco, San Jose or Sacramento.

"Each of the districts I talked to can't wait to show off their different parts of the city," he said. "I think Rockridge is planning to do a street fair during the race as a kickoff to the spring, and other districts are thinking of something along similar lines."

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With unique perspective, Ross helps UT

Front and center at every Vol Walk this season, every trip into a hostile
environment, Lane Kiffin led his Tennessee football team on a businesslike
march toward hallowed stadiums. Always nearby was Donnie Ross (B.S. 2005), perfectly invisible in plain sight.

Ross, a current master's student and a former UT and minor league baseball player, was hired into essentially a hybrid position as a police liaison to the athletic department; he then was given the freedom to mold that position into what he believed would benefit UT's athletes and athletics programs. It's an evolution still ongoing today as Ross works crowd control at events like the Vol Walk and sits behind the bench at basketball games while also educating student-athletes about safety and public behavior.

"Having Donnie Ross be around as a resource, and he's a former student-athlete at the University of Tennessee, he understands a lot of what these young men and women go through on a day-to-day basis," said UT athletic director Mike Hamilton. "And the pressures that come with that. He can talk to them in a very real way to help them to understand any concerns that the police department may have about behavior and how to make sure they know how to do things the right way. He's another one of those folks in the process of making sure that our student-athletes represent our University the right way in the community."

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