Running changed the course of Kevin Boyle’s life. He’s since helped students find their own stride, most recently completing the 50th Marine Corps Marathon on October 26 to raise thousands for American University’s track and cross-country program.
Boyle first laced up his running shoes after being cut from his eighth-grade baseball team. That pivot proved life-changing, teaching him that failure is an inevitable part of life—and that your reaction to it is what truly defines you. “I tell my students that you will fail, and while failure is always an option, you have the power to choose how you handle it,” he says. Ultimately, trading the diamond for the track led him to an athletic scholarship at St. John’s University in Queens, where he ran under Coach Matt Centrowitz.
After graduation, Boyle started teaching physical education and coaching track himself at nearby Great Neck South High School and attending law school classes at night.
He discovered he loved both endeavors. After retiring as a colonel in the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps after 26 years of service—during which he trained Army prosecutors around the world—Boyle called Centrowitz, then at AU, to plot his next move.
“I kept saying, ‘Matt, I want to get back into teaching and coaching,’” Boyle recalls. “He said, ‘Come to American.’”
Centrowitz was in his fifth season as AU’s cross-country coach in 1999 when he revived the track and field program—dormant since the 1970s. He won eight Patriot League championships and coach-of-the-year honors nine times.
Boyle served as an assistant coach from 2015 until 2020, remaining in the role after Centrowitz left AU in 2017. Following a period of part-time teaching in SPA’s Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology, he joined the faculty full-time in 2019.
His competitive spirit, however, never left the track.
Boyle, who completed his first marathon at age 15, has run countless races since. “I’ve done one every decade of my life,” he says. The Marine Corps Marathon—which he first raced in 1988, completing the distance in 2:48:20—checks off his sixties.
This time around, Boyle clocked in at 4:45:28—a slower time but a far greater achievement. He raised $15,499 from 61 donors, including his own commitment of $2,600 ($100 per mile). “Part of society, part of this university, part of being on a team, is to give back to our students so they can get those same opportunities I had when I was growing up,” he says, explaining his motivation.
It’s his way of going the extra mile for AU’s runners.