Brandon Schutt unintentionally created a bit of a media splash in 2021 when he stopped to help a fellow runner who had fallen during a district cross country meet.
Schutt, then a senior at Bellevue East High School, and Blake Cerveny, the Omaha Burke freshman he aided, were featured on the NBC Nightly News. Bellevue Mayor Rusty Hike declared Nov. 16 “Brandon Schutt Day” in Bellevue.
Now Schutt, who turns 19 at the end of the month, is again combining his love of running with his passion for helping others.
In 2021, Brandon Schutt helped a fellow cross country runner who had fallen at a meet.
Schutt (pronounced “shoot”) plans to drive to Big Springs, Nebraska, at the end of the month and run 364 miles across Nebraska, finishing at American Heroes Park in his hometown of Bellevue. His goal is to raise $50,000 to split among four local nonprofit organizations: Make-a-Wish Nebraska, Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, Community Alliance and the Stephen Center.
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He recently set up a GoFundMe page to collect contributions, titled Running Across Nebraska for Charity.
Schutt, now a freshman at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said he grew up in a “very, very blessed situation,” with perfect parents and a perfect family. He knows that’s not the case for a lot of people.
“If (you) can help people, then you have this moral obligation to help people,” he said. “I just want to do something to help people.”
Connor Mazzei, who coached Schutt as Bellevue East’s head cross country and distance track coach, said he’s not surprised that his former runner would devise such a plan.
“He definitely has a heart for philanthropy and helping out others, and he has a great passion for running,” Mazzei said.
Schutt will definitely be putting his love of running to the test. Early May 31, he and some friends and former teammates will load up in an RV and drive to Big Springs. His dad, Joe Schutt, will be at the wheel. His employer, Doug Hutcheson of Hutcheson Engineering Products Inc. in Omaha, agreed to finance the RV rental after Brandon Schutt wrote him a three-page letter explaining his plan. Hutcheson and Joe Schutt are covering all expenses so all of the funds raised will go to the charities.
“We’re very proud,” Joe Schutt said. “We hope he has fun. His heart’s in the right place.”
Brandon Schutt said he plans to start running the evening the team arrives and cover 40 miles a day for nine days. He said he plans to run at night to avoid the heat of the day, although his father noted that could change depending on weather and other factors.
Schutt said he’ll likely break the distance into two runs of 10 miles each followed by four five-mile segments. The team plans to travel on roads north of Interstate 80.
Different friends will join him for segments of the run and swap out during the breaks. Joe Schutt said some may come and go.
While the running plan isn’t set in stone — Brandon might cover extra miles one day and take a break another — he plans to coast the last four miles into Bellevue sometime on June 10.
But Schutt said he is prepared to cover 40 miles a day. He’s been training for about a year, although he was injured in February and had to take a month off. He ran 30 miles Saturday.
“I’m very confident I’ll be able to do this, because I’ve been working on this for so long,” he said. “And knowing I’m helping all these people, I’ll put my body on the line.”
His father, meanwhile, is hoping that the weather is good on the route and that his son can avoid injuries.
“We’re just hoping everything goes well and he can finish the way he wants to,” Joe Schutt said.
Brandon Schutt ran both cross country and track at Bellevue East his junior and senior years. While he had offers to run in college, he decided to do his own thing, including running across the state.
He is majoring in kinesiology at UNO. with the aim of becoming a physical therapist. He spent time in and out of therapy for injuries during middle school and early in his high school years and enjoyed learning how to prevent and address injuries. In addition to taking college classes and training, he also coaches track at Lewis and Clark Middle School.
It was during the last race of his senior cross country season that he met Cerveny, who had fallen once before during the late stage of the race at Pioneer’s Park in Lincoln. He pulled Cerveny, now a junior, to his feet and supported him as the two crossed the finish line together before going their separate ways. Others connected the two after the race. Today, they still keep in touch through the Strava activity tracking and social networking app.
“It was one of those things where it was like the right thing to do,” Schutt said. “Any reasonable person would have done the same.”
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