Peaco’s memory lives on
Marcie Peaco used to gush over the chance to give kids their first medals.
This Friday night, 14 schools will converge for the same track and field meet that she enjoyed lending her time to. The event, renamed in 2021 as the Seneca Valley Marcie Peaco Memorial Freshman/Sophomore Invitational, allows the sport’s younger athletes to get their feet wet.
“It’s been three years in dedication to her memory,” said her husband, Ray, who’s coached the Raiders’ track and field team since 1985. “She loved (this) meet.”
The Seneca Valley community is paying that same passion forward.
“The boosters have bent over backwards to make it something special for her,” said Ray, who takes charge in running the meet. “They’re taking care of a lot of stuff in the background.”
Along with making signs to increase awareness of Amyloidosis, the rare disease that took Marcie’s life in April 2019, parents have helped hold a fundraiser. The donations for which go toward the Amyloidosis Foundation and are also used for a pair of yearly scholarships given to Raider track and field athletes in her name.
The $500 grants – one for a boy, another for a girl – will be given out during a break in the action Friday. A dozen kids applied for it this year.
“She was really instrumental in the school,” Marcie Peaco meet coordinator Brian Kutchma said of its namesake. “She was Ray’s right hand in regards to the Seneca Valley track and field program … They were like salt and pepper.”
The charity effort has an accompanying GoFundMe page, which was created by Kutchma’s son, Aiden, as part of a senior class project. Ray estimates they raised around $4,000 a year ago.
For several years, Marcie worked in Seneca Valley’s athletic office as an administrative assistant. She dedicated a lot of her own time in the spring to giving Ray a hand.
“She was my best friend,” Ray said. “She would get paperwork together for me. She would do statistics for me. She would organize the ribbons and the medals. All of that stuff.”
The annual meet has been held for nearly 40 years. There’s a waiting list for schools to get in. It was expanded this year because some of the teams that attend don’t field relay groups.
“We’ve always designed it as a developmental meet,” Ray said. “We allow things like one false start (and) we allow up to four to five kids per event. We don’t restrict it to just two like the big meets do.”
Seneca Valley purposely holds the younger assembly on the same night that the Butler Invitational gets underway. Teams that show at both meets usually drop their more inexperienced members off at NexTier Stadium on the way to Butler.
“On that particular night, you could have four or five kids at (our) place, two kids at Butler, and have seven kids in each event,” Ray said. “It’s close … We’ve been doing that for years.”
Rather than join in on the gathering down the road, the Raiders’ upperclassmen will stay put and help run the meet. They’ll participate in the Rock Relays at Slippery Rock University Saturday, giving them a preview of the WPIAL finals’ venue.
