SLUH TODAY
A SEASON UNLIKE ANY OTHER Teamwork Earns Cross Country Second Place at State BY JOE PORTER CROSS COUNTRY AND TRACK/FIELD COACH, SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER
In the words of Coach Brian Gilmore, our season can be summed up as “relentless.” For us, the season started back in March when track was cancelled. The distance runners kept training, but on their own using Google Sheets to connect with one another with their training logs. They commented on each other’s training logs to create a sense of community. We were also able to bring in alumni like John Clohisy ‘09, Caleb Ford ‘10 and Ben Rosario ‘98 to keep them motivated to train, especially when we were unsure whether or not we would be able to compete. Ben Rosario’s challenge to the team was “let’s see how good we can be.” Regardless of circumstances that were beyond our control, this became the goal of the season. Throughout the season, we found our strength to be pack running. While we may not always have the individual champion in a given race, the gap between our top runners went from 1:05 to a scant 20 seconds by the district meet. At the state meet, our pack was running together the whole race, but we were back in 7th place at the 1K. The group moved up throughout the race to finish second overall as a team with a 15-second gap between our first and fifth runners. Not one of our runners finished in an All-State position (top 25 individuals). In my 16 years of coaching, I have never seen a team leave the state meet with a trophy without having at least one All-State runner. Our pack persevered and it was because we did it together with the focus of seeing how good we could be.
Winter 2020-21 | 9
