News: Rocky still inspires Trail grad

First thing you need to know about Rosario Smirne is that he and running used to get along about as well as Apollo Creed and Clubber Lang.

“I hated it,” he says. “Hated it. Hated it. Hated it.”

We’ll go ahead and take his word for it.

The man isn’t built for speed or distance anyway. He stands 6-foot-3, weighs about 250 pounds.

Power and will were his always the trademarks of his game, and he used both to build a memorable career on the basketball court and baseball diamond at Lackawanna Trail two decades ago.

He even spent a year playing professional baseball in Italy after starring as a catcher at George Washington University.

The second thing you need to know about Smirne is he’s kind of obsessed with a movie that hit theaters 40 years ago last month — a handful of years before he was even born.

Then again, most athletes tend to think they have a bit of Rocky Balboa in them, at some level.

Others, like Smirne, have a lot.

“Rocky has always been, by far, my favorite movie. And it’s not even close. Anyone who has known me for five minutes knows that,” Smirne said. “I’ll never forget the day I scored my 1,000th point in high school (basketball). It was an away game against Sacred Heart, and I know this is going to sound crazy because it was, what, 20-some years ago? But I had the flu. I was puking like crazy. I was puking in the locker room. There was a lot of snow, like a foot of snow, and my friends and family came to see me score my 1,000th point. Well, I needed 28 points to do it.”

“The other team, stupidly, played ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ during warmups. I got immediately pumped up. My family knew. I was going to do it.”

So when a friend called Smirne and told him about the annual Rocky Run in Philadelphia, it stands to reason why he felt intrigued. Sure, there’d be running.

But if someone ever wanted to feel like Rocky Balboa, this looked like as good an opportunity as any.

Every year, thousands of runners and walkers flock to the fictional heavyweight champion’s hometown to run a course much like the one Sylvester Stallone himself filmed Rocky’s training on in the early films.

The races start in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and they circle back to end there, as well.

Participants can run a 5K race or a 10-miler, but of course, Smirne opted for the Italian Stallion Challenge, which requires runners to complete both the 10-mile race and the 5K in the same day. Essentially a half-marathon.

“If I was going to do 10 (miles),” he surmised, “why shouldn’t I do 13.1?”

And so, pretty much every day for three months, Rosario Smirne did that thing he never wanted to do. He ran.

Started out huffing and puffing, considering himself fortunate to get a mile in. Took him about a month to feel like he really started to get the hang of it — the stride, the rhythm, the breaths, the mentality.

On Nov. 12, he finished the Italian Stallion Challenge in just a bit more than two-and-a-half hours.

Pretty good underdog story, but for Smirne, this endeavor pivoted less and less on being a Rocky fan and more on rekindling Rocky’s attitude as his training went on.

Smirne lives in Mount Vernon, Virginia, a government employee who last year started his own clothing company, which he calls the Quit Bitching Coalition, to sell T-shirts and other clothing to “mavericks” who “don’t give up and don’t give in.”

He has sold T-shirts and hats with the company slogan and skulls or gladiators or the like emblazoned on them to customers around the nation, and Smirne said the clothing is even starting to make a dent overseas.

Clearly, the clothing line is also Rocky-inspired, in a way, promoting the champ’s no-gimmick, no-frills approach to getting the job done.

But through that company, he built a groundswell of support that inspired him to run for something other than a movie.

On his right wrist, he wore two wristbands. One represented Kate’s Cause, a charity that raises funds for childhood cancer research, named after 4-year-old Kate Rhoades, a Virginia girl who died of leukemia in February.

The other was for Heart Of A Hero, a nonprofit started by Californian Ricky Mena, a motivational speaker who delivers positive messages and dresses up as Spider-Man to lift the spirits of sick children in hospitals around the globe.

Smirne wanted to raise awareness for these groups, and to do so, he vowed one thing: From the time he started the race to the time he crossed the finish line, this former catcher who hated to run wouldn’t stop running.

Even when he got tired. Even when he got sore. Even when the sunshine splashed across the Schuylkill River almost looked like a painting, and his every instinct told him he should take a picture.

“For these kids, they’d have to kill me,” he said. “I was going to finish that race without walking.”

Hollywood has churned out its share of masterpieces over the last century.

But has there ever been a film that resonates with people, even four decades after its release, the way Rocky has and still does? One that has inspired like this? Hit home like this? Cut to the chase like this?

The vast majority of us are the underdog at some point in our lives, and for Rosario Smirne, it’s a role to embrace, a role to cherish.

Because this guy is still running. Still in shape. Still feeling the stride, the rhythm, the breaths and the mentality. And he doesn’t plan to stop.

“It has changed everything,” he said. “I’ve always been in shape. I’ve always lifted weights. But in the course of doing this, I got in shape. I’ve worked so hard. And why would I let that go?”

“That wouldn’t be the Rocky way, you know.”