For the last 31 years, the theme song from the popular Sylvester Stallone movie "Rocky" has blared from the grounds of Burns Park Elementary School for one morning in early summer.

This Sunday, the tradition will continue — the Burns Park Run, an annual fundraiser for the school, will be this Sunday, starting at 8:30 a.m.

Runners can register online — at a discount — until at 9 p.m. today, and late-registration is available on the school grounds from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday and on race day.

This year, co-directors Joel and Jackie Dalton have put an emphasis on signing up more kids from the area to join in the festivities in order to promote fitness health and raise money for local school.

For the first time ever, kids can sign up under their own school, so any money they raise at the race can go to his or her respective school. The event usually attracts a few hundred Burns Park students, but this year, they want to reach out to other schools.

The Daltons, who have been in charge of the event for five years, are also working with the Ann Arbor Track Club to create the Youth Fitness Challenge, which encourages youngsters to run 25K-worth of local running events throughout the summer.

“We want to get more kids involved, and they can raise profits for the school they want to run for,” Joel said. “We don’t’ know how many kids we’ll see from other schools, but we hope that’ll grow in the coming years and get a lot of kids outside and active.”

In years past, the Burns Park Run, with the help of Sheila Taormina and the Ann Arbor Track Club, has attracted Olympic athletes to inspire the kids, as well. And not only just runners — they’ve gotten female powerlifters, fencers and other athletes to show kids that they can be successful with any skillset, body shape or interests.

The Daltons put in hundreds of hours a year to put on the event, all with one simple goal in mind — to make it better than the year before. And so far, they’re succeeding. Five years ago, when they took over, the run was attracting 500 to 600 people.

And it’s grown every year since — the Daltons are expecting more than 1,000 participants this year. This year, the run will have over 100 volunteers, who are all putting in time to make the event possible.

“We’ve added some new improvements, with the intent of getting more kids interested to run it,” Joel said. “We tried to make it more fun to run. It has to be more than running circles together, and I think we’ve done that."

Andy Reid covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at andrewreid@annarbor.com.