If someone were to ask me what my favorite sport that I’ve competed in was, I’d say Cross Country. There’s something about a sport where, despite there being hundreds of others running around you, you find yourself focusing on yourself almost the entire time. It took me a minute to realize this, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll probably talk more about Cross Country in the future, but right now I want to focus on my first season, where I fell in love with the sport.

The Beginning and the Challenge

I still remember how I was convinced to begin running Cross Country.

It was near the end of the school year, and my friend and I were getting ready for the Washington Intensive Wrestling Camp (I talked about it in a previous post that you can read here). We were preparing by completing a workout called the 400-meter combine. The workout was this: 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 military presses with a 45 lb plate, and 100 standing rows with the same plate. In between each rep, you run 400 meters at full pace.

Once we were done, we noticed that we had a spectator. One of the seniors who had been running before we arrived had finished his workout and was standing there watching us. This senior was one of our best distance runners and was off to a college in Montana to continue running. Overall, we didn’t really pay too much attention to him, as we figured he was just cooling off before heading home.

We did a quick walk around the track for a cool down and started heading back toward the locker room.

“Hey! Could I talk to you for a second?” the senior said to me as I walked by. I stopped as my friend kept walking toward the locker room.

Curious, I said, “Sure, what’s up?” While I had some senior friends from wrestling, I hadn’t really had a lot of conversations with this senior, so I was definitely curious about what he wanted to talk about.

“Listen,” he began, “this might not be my place to talk, but I have been watching you run during whatever it was you guys were doing. You have fantastic running form—like, better than mine. You have to do Cross Country. If you don’t, you are honestly wasting your talent. Please think about it. I think the team could use you.”

That really got my brain turning. Obviously, it was a recruiting pitch to join the Cross Country team. Like wrestling, it seemed like it was difficult to get guys to really commit to the sport. The part about talent was what caught me off guard. Usually, I was used to being told that I reminded people of my brothers. Being told that I had a talent that my brothers didn’t really get mentioned for was a unique experience for me.

I went home that night and did some thinking. I had already picked up my helmet for football—a Schutt DNA (which is now a bucket, but it was probably the sleekest helmet back in the day!) that was worn by my brother. I loved football, but there was one small problem: me. I was 5’10” and 130 lbs. Not exactly a build that screams football player. I had already seen the writing on the wall during my freshman year, but this was really the deciding point.

The next morning, I took my helmet to the head football coach and let him know what was going on. I could see the disappointment. The head coach was someone I knew for a while. I had been a football manager for him up until I started playing football in middle school, and he had known my brothers and me for a while. That being said, I think he also knew that I was going to be in a better sport for me and had some respect for me choosing my own path.

The next person I talked to was the head Cross Country coach. From what I had heard, he had tried to convince my brother a few times to go out and run for him in the past. As soon as I let him know that I was going to be joining the team, he smiled excitedly and said, “Okay!” and left for his classroom. That was it—that was the entire conversation.

Finally, I went home that day and told my parents. My mom was understanding, but my dad was upset. Looking back, I realize it wasn’t him being upset about running, but rather how I flipped to a different sport after already picking up gear for football. This was a pretty big motivator. My dad told me that I was going to hate the sport, not do well at all, and want to quit. After that, he told me to go run all the way to the high school and back (which was around a six-mile run from our house). I went out and did the run.

During this run, I had some time to think. I was pretty surprised about my dad’s reaction, especially him saying that I was going to hate the sport and wasn’t going to do well. That really motivated me. My initial goal was simple: prove my dad wrong.

Year One: A Season of Learning

Going through each race of my first season would cause the word count of this to balloon way past the point of a blog post, so I figured we could just talk about what I learned during my first year (Maybe I will talk about some more details in a future post).

For a quick summary of the season, I spent my time in and out of the varsity lineup until the end of the season, where I locked myself in as the fifth man in the order and finished 23rd at State. Also, the team won the State Championship in my first year. It was the first time I was part of a state championship team! It is still a highlight of my high school career, and I look back on it fondly.

I also learned a lot about myself and being competitive. Coming from contact sports like wrestling and football, I had developed a rather toxic “me vs. everyone” mentality. It was hard to celebrate other people’s successes, as I was entirely focused on myself. Any opponent was seen as an enemy.

Cross Country was completely different. Whenever I knocked someone out of the starting lineup, they actually congratulated me on a fantastic run. Competitors from other schools would come up and talk to me about how good of a race we all ran. Everyone was focused on what their time was rather than who they beat.

Instead of people being against each other, it felt like everyone just wanted to see others hit solid times and run their best. It seemed like doing that would have everything fall into place. I really found myself being nothing but happy during practices and events, as everyone around was so nice and inviting.

I also found morning runs for training to be therapeutic. Being on a run alone in the morning gave me time to think about whatever I wanted to—friends, school, family, whatever. It just gave me a moment to breathe and reflect.

Overall, Cross Country is easily my favorite sport I have done. I think it really helped change my mindset and made me a nicer individual (or at least I hope I was after). It also really let me break out of the family mold and become my own person. I was in a sport that none of my brothers did, which allowed me to set my own legacy. Looking back, I am really happy that I made the decision to run and would recommend the sport to anyone.