Presented by the Kiwanis Clubs Division 34 Managed by The Bayshore Kiwanis Club
To promote active lifestyles and sportsmanship... ...and to provide an opportunity for kids to be... ...the best that they can be.
The Al Julian Track and field Invitational Meet was named after Al Julian in 2002 in honor of his contributions to track and field in East Palo Alto in particular and youth development in general.
Parents and teachers came together and on the eve of Al’s retirement, decided that the best way to honor him was to establish a track and field meet in his honor.
Each child is expected to choose a minimum of three events including at least one field and one track event. 9-14 year olds can participate in a fourth additional event the 4X400 relay.
In its 13 year history the meet has sent several qualifiers to the International Meet with some winning medals.
For the first two years of its existence, the founding parents group with help from volunteers from Kiwanis, hosted the meet at Costano School. In 2004 however the parents group formally asked the Kiwanis Club of the Bayshore to take over the meet’s hosting. The meet has tradionally been held at Cesar Chavez Academy School, however, out of concern for the need to expose the youth to a regulation track field, in the last two years the meet has been held at Menlo Atherton High School and Palo Alto High School.
Although initially started as a meet serving youth attending schools in the local elementary school district, the meet has expanded to include youth from other communities in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.
Al Julian was a teacher, a coach, an accomplished instructor and mentor to youth. A very humble and soft-spoken man, Al joined the Ravenswood City School District as a teacher in 1959. Prior to that, Mr. Julian was an all-League track and wrestling star at Sequoia High School in the early fifties and a successful assistant coach to the San Jose State’s first NCAA National championship boxing team in 1958.
Track in particular and sports in general has been Al Julian’s primary love and for which, he devoted his skills, experience and energies as a coach and mentor. He was so effective with his students that some, such as Nathaniel “Nate” Branch played with the world famous Harlem Globetrotters; Rudy Law, played major league Baseball; Wendy Brown made the Olympic trials in track; Arthur Edge became a high school basketball coach; Carolyn Hamel-Galloway runs a track club in San Jose, California and Joseph Prince made the US track team and is currently an author and a teacher. Others set the AAU record (1969) in the 440 relay in the 12-13-year-old division, a record that stood unbroken for almost two decades.
