Coach Kambestad is running into new territory–teaching junior English and eyeing a marathon.

By Ann Sheehy

“Right now, I’m running about 45 miles a week,” said Marshall Kambestad, the head cross country coach and distance track coach at Central High School, last spring. “My goal for the summer is 80 or 90 a week.” 

Kambestad began his running career in middle school, “and I absolutely did not like it. After my first year I thought, I am never doing that again.” But he was encouraged to keep on and keep trying it, and eventually running became something he was passionate about. Kambestad ran for Stevens High School and was one of their top runners. In college he ran for South Dakota State University and has continued to run on his own since. In 2023 he ran “about 1500 miles, and in 2020 I ran 3000 miles.”

“I’ve done a couple half-marathons since college,” he said. “My next big goal is in November, to go to New York and run the New York City Marathon.” Kambestad has done practice runs as long as 22 miles, but he’s never done the full 26.2 miles of a marathon yet. He planned to run a marathon in 2020 but wasn’t able to due to COVID.

Kambestad also loves to teach. “I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “Both my parents were teachers,” and he saw that they loved what they did. When he graduated college, “I started with teaching social studies,” he said, “because that’s what my degree was in.” But the more he taught, the more fun English looked. He was able to get to know the kids better, and he realized that “English is something I just love to teach.”

“Before Central,” Kambestad said, “I taught at Southwest Middle School, 6th grade English.” Of the classes Kambestad has taught, that was his favorite as far as content. “But looking back,” he said, “each class has its own personality. What makes the class is the kids more than the content.”

Last year Kambestad taught the Capstone course at Central. Capstone is a class designed to “help kids with career exploration,” said Kambestad. In the class, students can “job shadow, or start a business, or do a service project.” The goal is to help students see what’s outside of the walls of the school.

Kambestad saw kids once a week to talk about their projects and soft skills such as listening well and receiving feedback. “The rest of the week is working on their project,” he said, “most likely out of the school building.” Capstone is a personalized class; according to Kambestad, “Every kid’s experience in this class is different.”

This year Kambestad left Capstone to teach English 11. “I’m excited to see the students every day,” he said. “The trouble with Capstone is that it hasn’t been that. So when Mr. Lundeen came to me with the option of switching to teaching English I jumped at it.”

“My favorite thing about teaching is getting to know the kids, being a witness to their journey,” Kambestad said. “And that’s more than just the year I have them in class. One of my favorite things is being around town and seeing old students, seeing where they are.”

Kambestad has been coaching since 2011; “I took the job here in 2020,” he said, “so three years now with cross country and track.”

Once, Kambestad said, “I broke my collarbone running with the kids, I tripped on the sidewalk. That’s probably the craziest thing that’s happened.”

Runners will occasionally get lost on routes (sometimes intentionally). “They’ll go up on the trail system on M Hill and disappear for a while,” Kambestad said. “But they all come back–usually while the sun’s still up.”

Kambestad’s favorite thing about coaching “is seeing in runners something that maybe they don’t see in themselves, and then putting them in a situation to pull that out.” He said that a lot of runners don’t realize how good they can be. “Winning a race isn’t the main goal; not everyone can win a race. The main goal is to see how close a runner can get to their potential.”

“The tricky part about coaching,” said Kambestad, “is figuring out the training for each kid. They all come in with different backgrounds. We have kids who’ve never run before they walk in, and then there’s kids who’ve been running since elementary school.” Kambestad spends a lot of time planning workouts and figuring out how far kids should run. If they run too much they’re more prone to getting hurt, so Kambestad has to find a balance where runners can stay as healthy as they can while still pushing themselves. 

Because of that, Kambestad said “the hardest part of coaching is planning workouts.” He paused. “And the weather. The weather is not very fun to deal with sometimes.” Whether it’s wind or heat or cold, he said that almost half of Central’s meets are affected by weather. 

As for the future, Kambestad foresees himself continuing to work with young people. “I’ll definitely keep on teaching and coaching,” he said. “That’s all I really see myself doing in life.”