Cross country in Arkansas: A runner's perspective
Both teams after the race with the parents who drove the whole 13 or so hours to see us run. (Debbie's parents, Justin's parents and brother, Caleb's dad, and Brianna's parents.)
If I put you on the spot, could you tell me where Arkansas is? If not, that's ok, but if you didn't know your XC team flew there last Friday for the South/South-east Regional cross country meet, you need to read this article.
Arkansas is a quasi-southern state west of the Mississippi, directly east of Oklahoma and Texas, south of Missouri and north of Louisiana. And though I had to look at a map four times to verify all that, one thankfully doesn't need such information to run Regionals there, as long as Coach and the airline pilot(s) know the way. Which they did.
What's the big deal about Regionals? Regionals, as the forerunner to Nationals, is the second-biggest "big deal" in NCAA cross country. It's like the semi-finals in college football, only it's a runner's first and last chance to qualify for the last round. There are no prerequisites for Regionals itself; any member NCAA school can participate. Qualifications out of Regionals, on the other hand, are pretty steep: only the first-place team and top four individuals are guaranteed to advance, out of over 20 teams and 130-150 runners. It's highly competitive, which means you're either there to qualify, or to see how good you are compared to those who do.
This year, EMU was there to see how good we were; and judging by the results, we're not half bad! Three of our ten runners--Kevin Beachy, Debbie Keiser, and Kendra Nissley--brought home All-Region honors and achieved personal records (PR's) by at least 50 seconds each, while almost everyone else on the team ran their best times as well and improved their place in the ODAC. It was an incredible day for the whole team, more than they or their coach had hoped for. Of the XC season training schedule, Lester Zook said "I know fundamentally that it should work, but am always pleasantly surprised when it does." Hendrix's flat course was expected to yield some fast times, but this was simply amazing.
So if you see Justin Hochstetler, Lars Akerson, Tim Harder, Ethan Zook, Caleb Yoder, Kevin Beachy, Brianna Rodriguez, Debbie Keiser, Kara Glick, or Kendra Nissley around, surprise them by telling them you heard they ran in Arkansas last weekend. And even if you still don't understand cross country or, as one friend of mine put it, Òthink that liking to run is silly," appreciate that, because some of us do, EMU's name is carried to places like Charlottesville and Little Rock, and all the layovers in between. After all, a whole team traveling together in blue warm-ups is bound to stimulate a lot of questions, especially with a name like EMU stitched on the jacket.
But don't worry, your tuition didn't pay our way; the team wanted to go so badly that it's fundraising the money. By the way, care to buy a shirt?
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