Balancing toddlers, teaching and graduate work, GCU alums lead upstart club team all the way to the AAU Junior Olympics
Michelle and Larry Ramirez spend their days teaching in the same classrooms they once sat in as young students. Evenings are usually the most demanding, and fun, reserved for their 3- and 2-year-old children. Late night, they become students again, logging into Grand Canyon University online courses and working toward a doctorate and a master’s degree to add to the GCU diplomas they’ve already earned.
Somewhere in the margins of that schedule, they built a track club that is changing the trajectory of kids who remind them of themselves.
L&MOP, short for Legacy & Mindset Obey Purpose, is a faith-driven middle-distance running program in southern New Jersey. In its first competitive season, the club qualified five athletes for this week’s AAU Junior Olympic Games in Des Moines, Iowa. On Tuesday, Brody Bailey became the club's first Junior Olympic champion, winning the 1500-meter run in the boys 14-year-old division.
“Now we get to be the people we wish we had in our lives, and GCU really equipped us for that and continues to equip us,” said Michelle, a high school financial literacy and marketing teacher. “We wanted to create an avenue where children that also have the same experiences can go to and feel like there's a community and home that supports them.”
The Ramirezes shaped the club to be about more than medals and acclaim. It embodies lessons from their coursework, classrooms and own hard-fought journeys growing up in underserved communities and single-parent homes.
Between them, the couple has two degrees from Grand Canyon and two more underway.
Larry earned his master's in elementary education from GCU in 2021 and is a doctoral learner in organizational leadership, anticipating completion in December 2027. Michelle completed a bachelor's degree in applied management in 2024 and is on track to finish her master's in secondary education in December 2026.
Both are also alumni of the Pleasantville, New Jersey, district where they now teach. Larry teaches seventh- and eighth-grade English as a second language and math at Pleasantville Middle School. He also coaches track and field, drawing on his own experience as an NCAA Division I middle-distance runner on scholarship at Hampton University and later the University at Albany. He went on to compete semiprofessionally for the Dominican Republic.
Michelle teaches at the neighboring high school across the street.
“This is our long-term mission that God has placed in our hearts,” Michelle said. “To be back in our home district, teaching in the same schools we graduated from and now mentoring kids on and off the track. It’s full circle.”
That devotion to community and learning means every minute of the day must be accounted for.
Larry is up at 4 a.m. to train himself and a friend. Around 6:30, Michelle is up getting their two children, 3-year-old Lumina and 2-year-old Larry, ready for daycare before they head to their respective schools.
In the afternoon, the second shift begins.
They head to the track, where L&MOP practices cater to 800-meter, 1,500-meter and 3,000-meter runners. Michelle organizes warmups and drills, films reps, manages social media and handles a steady stream of parent messages. Larry designs individualized workouts, tracks recovery and gathers the athletes for what he calls “the beef” – short talks about mindset, decision-making and faith.
The spiritual component of the club is baked into the name.
Legacy, Michelle explains, is the imprint you leave on people. Mindset is choosing to see challenges as opportunities. Obey and purpose flow from a sermon they heard about “obeying the purpose God has for you,” which helped them stop running from their calling to work with kids.
Their athletes have embraced that identity.
One of their typically shy student-athletes, who is being raised by grandparents while her parents split time between New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, recently gathered her teammates into a circle and led prepractice prayer.
Many of the student-athletes have parents who work two or three jobs, facing the obstacles that come with living in a district with concentrated poverty and a large immigrant population. That reality is at the heart of Larry’s doctoral dissertation, crafted to better understand parental perceptions of school- and community-based mentorship programs for Hispanic students and why they’re often underused.
“We live in a community that’s 65% to 70% Hispanic,” Larry said. “There are so many resources that aren’t being tapped. I want to understand why families don’t see them as a need, and what we can do differently.
“We want to help prepare these kids to be successful adults and be able to pass down to others what we pass to them.”
L&MOP is one way the Ramirezes are answering that question.
They host sneaker drives to make sure athletes have proper shoes. They scour Facebook Marketplace for discounted gear. They fundraise through a GoFundMe page, sell T-shirts and bucket hats with the club logo and lean on support from local parents and friends. At one point, Larry donated plasma and picked up Uber and DoorDash shifts – sometimes with athletes riding along for fun – to help cover club costs.
Michelle has helped athletes apply for summer work and write résumés. The couple does whatever it takes to serve their community. Out of the 10 athletes currently associated with the program, Michelle estimates that eight would not be able to compete at this level without support and financial help.
Families are taking notice. The mission, values and results on the track are yielding wins in all aspects of life.
“We tell them, winning will come if you do the right things,” Larry said. “I care more about your growth and who you’re becoming.”
That philosophy is deeply shaped, they say, by their time at Grand Canyon. It was modeled by online professors who held high standards with grace and by an advisor, Rachel Shively, who talked Larry through staying the course when his daily responsibilities started to overwhelm his pursuit of his doctorate.
“Every lesson we've learned through GCU has strengthened our commitment to serving others and investing in the next generation,” Michelle said.
She hopes to visit the West Phoenix campus for the first time this December to walk with her fellow graduates. Next to her diplomas, she’s planning to hang a framed photo of her in a hospital bed, completing her final bachelor’s degree assignment just hours after giving birth to Larry II.
“Eventually we'll have a moment and sit back and just be grateful for everything that we've invested into this,” Michelle said. “Ultimately, we know that we're doing something that someone did for us. That itself is rewarding.”
GCU News senior writer Jason Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected].
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