{"id":8669,"date":"2022-11-06T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/?p=50000003342"},"modified":"2022-11-06T07:31:59","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T15:31:59","slug":"meet-the-62-year-old-whos-running-for-lbccs-cross-country-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/meet-the-62-year-old-whos-running-for-lbccs-cross-country-team","title":{"rendered":"Meet the 62-year-old who’s running for LBCC’s cross-country team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Fillipow is an avid runner who has joined his fair share of pre-workout stretching circles, but none of them were like his first practice this summer as a member of the Long Beach City College cross-country team at the age of 62.<\/p>\n

A Long Beach native who called himself a \u201cwannabe athlete\u201d at Wilson High School, Fillipow taught science at Long Beach Poly High for 31 years while coaching swimming, track and cross-country.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what made the LBCC Vikings stretching circle so awkward at first.<\/p>\n

\u201c(LBCC coach Julio Jimenez) was calling me Mike, and a couple former (Poly student-athletes) were calling me coach, and so I had to say, \u2018We gotta straighten this out,\u2019\u201d Fillipow said. \u201cI don’t like being called by my first name because of habit. When I grew up, you call everybody older than you \u2018Sir\u2019 or \u2018Mr. Whatever.\u2019 And I didn’t want to be called coach because that’s not what I wanted to be doing here. So we just came up with having them call me, \u2018O.G.\u2019 for ‘Old Guy’ so that’s kind of my nickname on the team. I’m O.G.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only is he practicing with his teammates every day at 6:30 a.m., Fillipow was a scoring runner for LBCC at the South Coast Conference Championships 4-mile Palos Verdes Park course last week. By running a 28:49.7 to finish 51st out of 77 runners, Fillipow helped the Vikings finish second in the seven-team conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something I wanted to do for a long time, it\u2019s for the challenge,\u201d Fillipow said. \u201cI\u2019ve never been on a running team. \u2026 I was just coaching for 30-plus years. I wanted to try to immerse myself in the other end of that. \u2026 I trained my ass off to slow down as little as possible every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mike Fillipow. Photo courtesy the Fillipow family.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fillipow is also giving back to local sports by being the president of the Long Beach Century Club\u2014an organization that raises money for Long Beach sports. He joined the club seven years ago and stepped up to be president for two years in a critical post-COVID time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel we’re going in the right direction (with the Century Club),\u201d Fillipow said. \u201cWe’re getting our membership back up. We’re also slowly changing our footprint on how we communicate and increase our social media presence. Those were some of my main goals coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like his team at LBCC, Fillipow knows it takes a good support system to get the most out of the club and its dedicated membership while local athletic programs came out of the pandemic shutdowns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s so many good people in the club that help run it like Dan Gooch, John Fylpaa and Sam Breuklander,\u201d Fillipow said. \u201cTheir heart and soul are behind this and the club keeps rolling because of them, not because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fillipow isn\u2019t the only member of the LBCC cross-country team who could also be a member of AARP. In fact, his wife Amelia did the same thing a few years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, my training is a little bit different,\u201d he said. \u201cI never miss practice, but being older, you need more recovery. Coach Jimenez has been really good about trusting me when I should cut back.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to stay eligible, Fillipow is taking 12 units of classes at LBCC\u2019s Pacific Coast Campus. He enjoys working on his cabin so he\u2019s taking classes in framing, roofing and interior carpentry.<\/p>\n

During his 17 years as a Poly cross-country head coach, Fillipow\u2019s Jackrabbits won 16 Moore League titles, including each of the last 13. They qualified for CIF in every season and made six appearances at the CIF State meet. He thinks the lessons he learned as a coach makes him a better teammate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been part of a running team before,\u201d Fillipow said. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge and that\u2019s what I wanted. \u2026 I didn’t want to be perceived as a coach. I wanted to be a 100% athlete and just absorb that part of the sport. From that perspective, it’s been fun and I see how I would like to try to help out and I think that my next phase of all this is going to help, apply to be an assistant next year for the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/lbpost.com\/news\/local-history-the-26-second-flight-of-the-spruce-goose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Fillipow has embraced the nickname he earned during practice: \u2018O.G.\u2019 for ‘Old Guy.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":17262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[86],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2699],"class_list":["post-8669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-lbcc","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}