Author: Claire Law

  • Brookline alum in the running for a global marathon record

    James Redding and his mother Lisa Redding started their running journey together. Photo by Claire Law

    James Redding is getting a head start on spring break.

    The 19-year-old Boston College sophomore flew to Japan a few days ahead of his mid-semester break to take his spot among 37,500 people who ran the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday.

    The Brighton teenager, who grew up attending Brookline schools and is now an assistant varsity hockey coach at Brookline High, already has five marathons under his belt, including three of the six original Abbott World Marathon Majors: Boston, New York and Chicago.

    The World Marathon Majors, sponsored by the health care company Abbott Laboratories, is a competition that awards points and prize money to top finishers in high-profile marathons over the course of a year. The Sydney Marathon was added this year as the seventh race in the series, but the competition will continue to award its Six Star medal for any participants who complete the original six marathons.

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    Redding unexpectedly secured a spot in the Tokyo race, his fourth World Marathon Major, through the lottery system, he said.

    “I was like, ‘I can’t pass this up,’” Redding said. “We gotta go now.”

    After Tokyo, he is on track to run the remaining two World Marathon Majors: London in April, then Berlin in September. If he finishes as planned, he has a chance at becoming the youngest male athlete to finish the six World Marathon Majors, at age 20 years and four months.

    That distinction is now held by American Paralympic athlete Daniel Romanchuk, who completed the six Marathon Majors in the wheelchair division at 20 years and 7 months, in 2019. For non-para athletes, the youngest male to finish all six is Hendrik Tomala of Germany, who finished the six Marathon Majors in 2024 at just one day older than Romanchuk was when he finished, according to Abbott World Marathon Majors staff.

    Redding’s mother, Lisa, whom he began his running journey with, was cheering him on in Tokyo.

    “I never imagined going to Japan,” said Lisa Redding, who also went to Brookline High School and has worked at the school for over 20 years, first as a math teacher and now as an administrator. “Supporting him and watching him do his thing brings me so much joy.”

    James Redding, center, runs the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday, March 2, 2025. Photo by Deb Redding.

    James started running when he was a freshman at Brookline High in 2019, to get in shape for hockey tryouts. He persuaded his mother to join him on runs, with the goal of running a 5K every month.

    “When your 14-year-old son says, ‘Hey, Ma, let’s do something together,’ you don’t say no,” Lisa Redding said. “I just kept saying yes, because my son wanted to spend time with me.”

    After the 5K, they trained for a 10K. By the fall of 2021, they had finished their first half marathon together.

    “And then, as soon as I crossed the finish line of the half marathon, I turned to her and I said, ‘Let’s do a full,’” James Redding said.

    Lisa Redding refused at first, she said, until James told her one of the charities partnering with the Boston Marathon was the cancer center where she was treated for Hodgkin lymphoma, when James was 2 years old.

    “He told me, ‘Ma, you can run the Boston Marathon for Dana-Farber,’” Lisa said, blinking away tears. “How could I say no to that? They literally saved my life.”

    James, not yet 18, was too young to run the Boston Marathon. He cheered on his mother as she ran her first marathon in April, and he ran his first marathon in Portland, Maine, the following October, as a high school senior.

    He went on to run his second marathon in Clearwater, Florida. Then, he ran the Boston Marathon for the Brookline Education Foundation, the Chicago marathon for the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, and the New York City marathon for New Balance. He secured a spot in the New York City marathon through his work at the Warrior Ice Arena, which includes coaching clinics, being a hockey camp counselor, working games, and doing facilities and ice management work.

    Redding’s finish times for his marathons have been around 4 hours, plus or minus 15 minutes, he said. Tokyo was his slowest time, at around 4 hours and 54 minutes, as he had been battling a cough for the past few days. His fastest time was in Chicago, at 3 hours 43 minutes.

    James said his training cycles are around four months, starting at 10 miles, and going up in 2-mile increments every two weeks.

    “A lot of a lot of people are, like, ‘You’re nuts,’” James said. “I’ve gotten to the point where running doesn’t suck anymore. After a certain point … you mentally grasp it, you physically grasp it, and as you do it more and more, it hurts less and less.”

    Deb Re, James’ great-aunt, said she’s watched him grow up into a young man who is warm, caring, curious, brave, and disciplined.

    “He keeps moving that goal post. Every time he reaches a goal, he sets another one,” Re said. “It’s not really so much about the endgame, it’s about how he lives his life … it’s a joy to watch him do that.”

    Redding said when he goes running, he’s in his own world.

    “Everything else just stops … I never think about school, work, hockey, anything else,” Redding said. “It’s just, I’m going for this run. Enjoy that it’s a beautiful day out. Or, if it’s raining … it’s good practice, and if it’s not raining on race day, it’s just a bonus.”

    This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

  • Brookline High sees some improvement amid nationwide student mental health decline

    Claire Law

    Graduates line up at Brookline High School’s commencement ceremony on June 2, 2024. Photo by Linus Guillory via the Public Schools of Brookline.

    Young, developing minds on social media. Post-pandemic rebuilding of social connections. Academic pressure in a big school. These all play roles in how Brookline High School students are experiencing issues that are part of a nationwide mental health crisis, students and staff say.

    Of 904 Brookline high schoolers surveyed in May 2023, 28% reported feelings of persistent hopelessness, 12.8% reported thoughts of suicide in the past year, and 7.6% reported making a plan, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey results .

    These numbers are improvements from those in the 2021 survey. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, is administered by the school district every other year, said Matthew DuBois, the district’s senior director of clinical services and social-emotional learning.

    “We can see improvement, and we still have a lot of work to do,” said DuBois, who oversees the district’s school psychologists and counselors.

    The next survey will be conducted in May, and results are expected to be available in fall, DuBois said. Anecdotally, in the year and half since the most recent survey, DuBois said, he has seen fewer risk assessments and hospitalizations, which are conducted when there are concerns for a student’s safety.

    During weekly advisory periods, students engage in mindfulness activities and community-building exercises, DuBois said. Ninth-grade health class teaches skills for healthy coping and emotional regulation, he said, and students can opt to take courses after ninth grade that further develops these skills.

    Social media and lack of sleep

    Jordan Brandao, a 14-year-old freshman, said there are definitely students at Brookline High who struggle with their mental health, but he added that there seems to be a lot of mental health resources at the school.

    “I feel like there’s more help here than [my] elementary school, because it’s a bigger community,” Brandao said.

    Liam Loughnane, a 15-year-old sophomore, said some students shun away efforts to bring the community together.

    “Maybe because they think it’s all corny. I’ve felt that way before,” Loughnane said. “Maybe because they’re not in the mood for it, and they think they can handle the problem on their own, when they haven’t actually tried to.”

    Melanie Ho, an 18-year-old senior, said since Brookline High offers more AP courses than other high schools, students can feel pressured to take as many as they can, which can lead to stress.

    “This place really encourages going to college,” Ho said. “That’s not the best for everyone, but it’s, like, what’s forced upon people, to make numbers look good.”

    Jeremy Wang, a 15-year-old sophomore, said he thinks lack of sleep can worsen other mental health problems.

    “I’m not getting enough sleep, definitely,” Wang said. “I’ve talked to a lot of my friends. They’re going to bed at, like, 12 a.m., 1 a.m. sometimes.”

    Social media and smartphone use reduces quality of sleep when used late at night, Dubois said, and it can introduce kids to a set of experiences that their brains are not ready to navigate. A 2023 advisory  by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy noted that frequent social media use may be associated with “distinct changes in the developing brain.”

    Alice Faust, an 18-year-old senior, said she recently deleted Tiktok and Snapchat from her phone, which has given her more time for seeing friends and doing activities that build her character.

    “I mean, I still have Instagram, but I’m definitely on it less,” Faust said. “Ever since I’ve stopped using social media as much, it’s like, you can focus on other things better, and you just have heightened awareness and more will to discover new things.”

    Finding belonging and community at BHS

    What’s really important to improving mental health, Dubois said, is having a sense of belonging. At a large school like Brookline High, students said, they find community in clubs.

    One such community group is the Queer Student Program, which meets in a room called the Queer Student Union, said physics teacher Julia Mangan. Here, students can attend meetings for Gender and Sexuality Alliance or Queer Action Club, or simply hang out during their free blocks.

    “For many kids, it’s like their home away from home,” said Mangan, a co-leader of the Queer Student Program. “It’s allowed the kids to connect with some of the teacher volunteers who staff it.”

    Brookline LGBTQ students were hit especially hard, according to the YRBS results. A much higher percentage of transgender students who replied to the survey reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness, reflecting national trends.

    “Being alone was really difficult for most teens and in particular for teens for whom home is a really tricky place,” Mangan said. “School can actually often be a queer student’s most affirming place, where they can be themselves the most.”

    Philip Steigman, a Brookline parent who works in youth development, said there should be more coordination between community programs outside of school.

    “There’s a huge ecosystem here, but we’re not coordinated around an existing strategy,” said Steigman, who is a policy fellow at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. “Connectedness is sort of the magic formula to combat these mental health issues. Personally, that’s what I believe.”

    This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on February 18, 2025.