Staff photo / Hailey Rogenski
Austin Shaffer of Hubbard runs the seventh annual 5K on the Runway race Saturday morning at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna. The race is organized by the Youngstown Air Reserve Station Base Community Council to raise funds for Air Force employees stationed locally. The money raises funds to support reservists at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station’s 910th Airlift Wing.

VIENNA — The Youngstown Air Reserve Station Base Community Council hosted its seventh annual 5K on the Runway race at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport to raise funds for Air Force reservists who are part of the 910th Airlift Wing.

YARS serves as a base to 2,000 Air Force reservists and support staff.

Base Community Council President Rick Hale said the council raised approximately $30,000 through participation fees and business sponsors.

“Our function as the Base Community Council is to be a liaison between the community and the base to help support the airmen here at the base in ways the Air Force can’t,” he said.

Council fundraising Director Eric Merkel said in the past, funds raised through the race have been used to pay for gas for Air Force workers returning home. He also said some of the funds will be used to build a “safe room” for the airmen to have peer support.

“We go to the base commander, Michael Maloney, and he gives us a list of things that he would like us to provide funding for and that’s what we do,” he said.

Col. Maloney said this year’s race was a symbol of the community coming together.

“The fact that everybody starts together and everybody ends together, and the entire community can run by our airplanes and our base and see our airmen and actually get a chance to meet them, talk to them and do something together basically defines what (the) Youngstown Air Reserve Station is for this community,” he said.

Although Air Force employees participated last year, this is the first year they ran alongside those in attendance.

Hale said more than 400 people attended the runway race, with about half of them being runners.

Among those who attended was Ava Liptak, 15, of Cortland. She said she attended for her grandfather, who was a Vietnam War veteran.

“I know how much he did for us and the country and it means a lot to do something for him,” she said.

The overall men’s winner for the race was Dominic Delmoro from Doylestown, with a record of 15 minutes and 24 seconds. The overall female winner for the race was Kara Shirley from Oakmont, Pa., with a record of 21 minutes and 8 seconds.

Sponsors of Saturday’s race included the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2074 in Niles, The Sha’nini George Foundation, the Cafaro Foundation, 7/17 Credit Union, the Trumbull County Community Foundation, OneHealth Ohio, Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, Western Reserve Building Trades, City Machine Technologies Inc., PI&I Motor Express, Becdel Controls Inc., the Eastern Ohio Military Affairs Commission, MS Consultants Inc., Mod Wash, DeSalvo Construction Co. Inc., Western Reserve Mechanical Inc., King’s Sanitary Service, Braydich Dental, The Gibson Agency, Molly Maid, Metalcrafts Inc., Small Business Management Inc., Greenwood Chevrolet Inc. of Austintown, Giant Eagle, Wheatland Steel Processing, GCXC Race Timing and Management, Bazetta-Cortland Optimist Club and the city of Cortland.