Santa Barbara AHEPA Chapter 243

Hello Brothers,



I am really glad to let you know that the First Santa Barbara International Marathon was a good success for our Chapter. It is great if you take in mind that we had a short time to work and prepare everything.



We worked all of us as a TEAM and that is the big benefit out of this event!I have attached some of the photos i received already




Firstly, I feel proud of our running team. All the 11 team runners (full marathon or relay teams) did great job, finished the race and nobody was injured!!!
These great guys are:
Carolyn Diacos
Alex Chuchas
Diana Georghiou
Kara Osborn
Mike Osborn
Sophia Kenrick
AJ Carralejo
Adam Carralejo
Alex Ioannidis
George Papazacharioudakis

And myself
I think that they worth our Chapter’s graceful sponsorship, since most of them have their school exams and they took their time off from studying to go and run. Most of the others are working, which makes training hard too…



Secondly, our booth, both days, Saturday at the EXPO and Sunday at the finish line was a hit!!! We had more than 3000 people walking by and most of them were interested in listening to our brothers explaining the Marathon’s Greek Heritage (only a few knew about).

I want to thank especially:

a. Costas Davlantes and Greg Pentages for setting up the booth on Friday at the EXPO.

b. Costas Davlantes and Bill Poulos for doing most of the work at the booths on Saturday from early morning until late afternoon and on Sunday the whole day.

c. Bill Tragos, Alex Haimanis and our St Barbara’s YAL member Stephanie Brown for spending their Saturday afternoon at the EXPO, helping at the booth.

d. George Papazacharioudakis for doing all the printing job needed. He printed hundreds of paper that saved AHEPA a few dollars. George spent much time at the booth on Saturday, although we was busy and picked up the t-shirts on Friday from the printing company.



Thanks to Vasilis Inempolidis we have some good photos of our runners finishing the race. Vasilis was also yesterday at 6am at the starting line, trying to take the first photos of the day and on Saturday at the EXPO too.



I want to thank James Stathis for designing our fliers and creating the 1 minute video about Marathon’s history that attracted everybody visited our booth on Saturday. He also promoted this event to his business mailing list spreading the word around. Great job for so late notice



Thanks to Costa Frango, our participation was promoted to the local press and TV. John Palminteri on Sunday at the finish line had some words to tell about AHEPA Running team.



Alex Chuchas did all the work regarding the runners participation. He did all the registration process online (a really time consuming task) and coordinated the relay teams. Thanks Alex!!!



I want to tell a few words about Bill Tragos. He threw the idea on the August meeting and motivated everyone to work. He did all the job with the race directors to get the booths and introduced generally AHEPA as a honorable group among the others! He hosted the last meeting at his house and also donated the pasta dinner for the runners on Saturday. Bill, you inspired everybody to start discussing about the E…



And of course I want to THANK ALL OF YOU for adopting the idea, gracefully sponsoring the runners, taking the money out of the chapter’s account and for buying most of the t-shirts to promote the idea. I want, personally, to thank you all for motivating me to start training for the marathon just a few months ago and do something that I had never even dreamed about!!!



Sorry if I missed somebody, but I feel really tired after running the full thing today.



I ‘ll be flying to Greece on Tuesday for the Christmas holidays, happy about this event but more happy about living within a so great Greek community 5000 miles away from my family. That will make my parents feel more comfortable…



Thanks for everything and have blessed Christmas holidays





Panos


P.S. If i forget some of our members, Jim and Alex please forward this e-mail
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Panagiotis Nik. Mitroulias