{"id":280367,"date":"2019-06-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/la-jolla-high-school-coach-runs-110-miles-in-honor-of-former-students-dad\/"},"modified":"2019-06-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T07:00:00","slug":"la-jolla-high-school-coach-runs-110-miles-in-honor-of-former-students-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/la-jolla-high-school-coach-runs-110-miles-in-honor-of-former-students-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"La Jolla High School coach runs 110 miles in honor of former student&#8217;s dad"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>When Maggie Walsh was a sophomore in Tom Atwell&#8217;s AP European History class, she lost her father, Carl Walsh, to cancer. As a senior at La Jolla High School, she challenged Atwell to run 100 miles on the campus&#8217; track to support the American Cancer Society&#8217;s Relay For Live event.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>He accepted, and 10 years later, he&#8217;s running farther than ever.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Atwell, who is also the head water polo and swim coach, began his annual run at 7 p.m., June 5. At 2:30 p.m., June 6, he ran the final mile of &nbsp;110 in honor of the event&#8217;s 10th anniversary.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It&#8217;s amazing. There were kids out here all night,&#8221; Atwell said. &#8220;Some showed up at three in the morning. Some parents came out. So I actually never ran alone the whole time. It&#8217;s been really inspiring.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>While this annual feat started because of a student, Atwell and his family have had their own experiences battling cancer as well. Nearly 20 years ago, he was diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer called fibrous histiocytoma after developing a large tumor on his hip.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It can be very aggressive and a lot of times fatal, but I was lucky enough to be a part of a trial that was able to cure me,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And because of all the research on breast cancer, my wife is now 10 years out of it and very healthy.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>With those inspiring stories in mind, Atwell &mdash; along with his students &mdash; ran those last four laps around the track. His wife, Utahna Atwell, and his daughter, Lexi Atwell, joined him to finish the final lap. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It hits super close to home,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I&#8217;m inspired as his daughter, as a student of his and as a member of this community.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Atwell said he hopes to show students that when faced with hard times, there&#8217;s always something you can do. He believes this idea is critical because every one of his 170 students has been affected by cancer in some way.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;I&#8217;m not a doctor. I&#8217;m not a scientist, so I&#8217;m not going to find a cure for cancer or event treat patients. But I can run. It&#8217;s my one way I can fight back.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>For more information about ACS&#8217; Relay For Life, visit<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/cancer.org\/\">cancer.org<\/a>.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Maggie Walsh was a sophomore in Tom Atwell&#8217;s AP European History class, she lost her father, Carl Walsh, to cancer. As a senior at La Jolla High School, she challenged Atwell to run 100 miles on the campus&#8217; track to support the American Cancer Society&#8217;s Relay For Live event.&nbsp; &nbsp; He accepted, and 10 [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":280368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"La Jolla High School coach runs 110 miles in honor of former student's dad","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}