Let's talk about hard work and feeding off of each other...

Ok guys & gals, first of all, we apologize that we haven't updated about Saturday's Dunlap Invitational yet. Nevertheless, we were doing more than getting sunburnt Saturday morning. Dave and I were paying attention to some rockin' races, and we will get our report up as soon as we see the final results to fill in some details.

Respect your elders: a look at the history books
But tonight, I'm going to talk a little bit about the Morton XC team's history, and what you can do to change it's future. If you haven't done so yet, click the links on the right for the 'Men's 14 & 15 Minute Clubs' and the 'Women's 19 Minute Club.' I just added the women's list tonight, so if you've checked before, check again, 'cause it's there now. Note that the women have changed distances several times, so they have several different lists.

Ladies, I apologize that this post may seem a little guy oriented. It is still directed at you, but unfortunately, at this point my knowledge of the guys team is more complete, since that's what I ran for, and those are the guys I coached last spring. I mean for my message to apply to both the guys and girls teams, and have tried to write it as so.

Now after looking at those lists, what do you notice?? The first thing I notice (besides the fact that Annie Wetterhus, Trent Hoerr, Curt Carius, and Mark Oberle were ridiculously fast) was that fast runners often came along at the same time. If you notice on the girls 12 minute club list, there was a group of sub 13 minute young ladies from 1981-83, and then no more until 1994. And then all of a sudden over three years, we had 3 more sub 13 young women.

Let's look at the men's list, where the differences aren't quite so dramatic. However, there were quite a few sub16 men from about 1977 until about 1988 or so, at which point the list starts to look a little dry. Then in 1994, BAM!! Three guys on the list in one year, something that hadn't been done in 12 year or so. Then in 2000, we have another two guys, followed by Trent Hoerr's escapades in '01 and '02.

Now look at the two lists together. The men were very strong in the late '70s and early '80s. The women were very strong in the early '80s. The men were strong in '94 and the women were strong from '94 to '96. The men were strong '00 to '02 and Beth Schmidt in '01 is the only woman on the list for 6 years.

So why are they together? Is it some weird genetic anomaly that people with the genes to run fast, and the desire to do so, all happen to be born around the same time, despite different families? And this only applies to Morton, and no surrounding communities? Or do fast runners make other runners faster? Well, I can't speak about the teams in the '70s and '80s, but I can tell you about some of the later ones. And I'll tell you this: hard-working runners make other runners faster.

Tooting my own horn because it's the story I know the best
I'm proud to be on the men's 15 Minute Club List, but I also count myself lucky, because I had that elusive near-perfect race on a pancake flat near-perfect course. David Elliott, listed with the same time as me, was a better XC runner. I wouldn't admit at the time, because I wanted to beat him, but 9 times out of 10 in an XC race, he had my number. I was consistently one of our top scorers, and one of the better runners in the Mid-Illini for a few years, but Elliott (Conference champ) almost always beat me.

But you know what my biggest contribution to Morton's team was? It wasn't any one race I ran, but it was the fact that I helped make David Elliott, Jimmy McKelvey, Trent Hoerr, and Nick Aldridge (16:17 @ Detweiller) faster. We had four guys who went into our 1999 season believing they were ready to be Morton's top man, believing that they were ready to run under 16 minutes. Each of those four guys knew the other four believed the same thing and had been working all summer to make it true. It turned out that season that Elliott was the best of us, but the fact that all four of us wanted that top spot led to some great things as a team that season including a Mid-Illini team title and being undefeated in dual and tri meets.

Why did this happen? Because Aldridge wanted to be top dog. And I did too. And McKelvey also did. And Elliott too. And none of us wanted to let another take that spot. And we happened to luck out and get superstar in the making Trent Hoerr contributing as usual 5th man as a freshman. He later went on to be way faster than any of us (which I don't claim credit for).

Beth Schmidt was the same way, as she was the product of several young women (most a class or two ahead of her) working together to have a strong team. She continued to work hard, as she had learned from others she ran with, and had a superb senior campaign.

Fast Forward to spring '08: Tooting the horns of some of the other MHSRunners creators.
Now lest you think I'm suggesting that your team should all be a bunch of jerks just waiting to beat on their teammates, let me tell you about this past spring. I had the opportunity of coaching the young distance running men of the track team. Nathan Young and Dave Getz were two of our few seniors and were the swiftest young men on the team that year. Nathan and Dave had been the top two runners in XC the previous fall and they each came into the season with the same goal of a sub 5 minute mile(and I promptly made them set a more difficult one, but that's a different story), and they worked together to achieve it.

They ran almost every step of every interval together and ran as best friends. They each wanted to beat the other, but they were also ready to rejoice in each other's success, and they even had the opportunity to work together for a sweet relay victory. They didn't want to beat each other for the sake of beating each other, but for the sake of running as fast as they could. When Sectionals came and they found out they were assigned to different heats, I believe 'angered to the point of rage and bitterness' was left on someone's voicemail. They were mad that they didn't get to run together. They had run every step that season together, and wanted to close their season on a similar note. Talk about friends making each other faster! I can't think of a better example. And you know what? Working together, they exceeded the goals they had set for themselves by far.

It was great to see the younger athletes working together throughout the season as well, but more importantly, seeing the fire lit in their eyes as they saw how they were improving, and saw how Nathan and Dave improved and succeeded.

So what do we learn from this?
I'll answer this question with some other questions.

• Who wants to be top dog the rest of the year?
• Who wants to be top dog next year?
• Do you want to do it working together or against each other?

Don't for one minute think that the way you're running now is the way you have to continue to run. The guys team has been led by 3 different runners this year, and two of them have had races where they were 6th on the team!! So don't think you can't move up, and don't think that others can't catch you. Just because you've been beaten by someone 4 or 5 times this season doesn't mean you can't catch them, this season or the next. And if you don't quite get that position you wanted, you made your team better for it by trying. The closer your 4th and 5th runners are to your 1st, the more successful your team will be.

You guys are lucky to have very young teams. The fact that you are doing so well with only one senior scoring between the guys and girls teams bodes well for the future. But you know what? Metamora is running well with a lot of underclassmen as well. So is EP. I believe Morton can improve and succeed against those teams, but it's going to take several athletes who all desire to lead that charge. And don't think that you can't do it if you're not among that top 5. I've seen guys who weren't varsity one year lead a team the following year. Nick Aldridge ran 16:17 as a senior, and contributed to a strong team, but was a 24 minute runner as a freshman. I haven't seen a runner on your team who I don't believe could do the same thing. All it takes is hard work.

I can only tell the stories I know
Talk to others who can tell you more. Mr. Hurst, the health teacher at the high school, coached the team for 10 years or so, and can tell you all sorts of stories. He can tell you about Annie Wetterhus and the girls from '94 to '96, he can tell you about the guys team of '94, he can tell you about Trent Hoerr and Beth Schmidt, and he can probably spill some dirt on my guys from '99 and '00.

Curt Carius makes it to most the meets and could probably tell you loads of stories from the stronger teams of the late '70s. He may be there to watch Brooke run and not to tell stories...but corner him and make him talk. Josh Stubbs, Charley Hanson and Mike Getz are on the 15 Minute Club, still live in Morton, and go to the same churches as some of you. Many of you know Tim Owdom, and he ran some with Trent and Beth. There may be others I don't know, or you may know people who ran well at other schools. I think you'll find a common theme about hard work, though you may find some guys with freakish talent. Trent Hoerr might have ran under 16 minutes before graduation whether he put in heavy preseason mileage or not. But it was hard work that got him into the 14s and then made him NCAA All-American.

So what's the point of all these stories?
The point is simply to make you realize that you can add to those lists if you want to. With a few exceptions, most of the men and women on those lists were guys and gals just like you, who worked hard, often together, to make a strong team. So let's make '08, '09 and '10 years with a lot of new entries on those lists! 25 years from now, let's have young Morton runners looking over those lists and wondering how so many people in '08, '09 and '10 made it onto the lists.

-Steve Gifford