The St. Louis University High cross country team is a moving target. Appropriate, right?
It is either the busiest team in the area, racing seven times in less than a month. Or, maybe, it's the least engaged, running in only three events in a month.
At first glance the Jr. Billikens are hard to measure. It took O'Fallon coach Jon Burnett a little while to figure out the SLUH operation.As his program was building, he took a peak at the SLUH schedule and began to penciled in some of the same dates. Whatever SLUH was doing, it was working.
Almost as soon as he began jotting down dates, Burnett realized SLUH was keeping an impossibly busy schedule. The Jr. Bills were entered in everything. How did they do it?
As it turns out, SLUH's cross country program defies typical scheduling - and maybe description. The Jr. Billikens enter so many events because they are looking for racing opportunities for two varsity squads, an armada-sized junior varsity and nearly three dozen freshmen runners.
Interestingly, the runners with the fewest stickers on their SLUH travel bags are the varsity "A" squad. When SLUH smoked the field at Saturday's Metro Catholic Conference Championships, it was only the third race of the season for several of the team's top runners. MCC champ Michael McLaughlin's outings prior to the league meet were the Forest Park Cross Country Festival on Sept. 10 and the Palatine (Ill.) Invitational on Sept. 24.
While SLUH will have varsity and JV entries in races at St. Francis Borgia on Saturday and at Clayton next week, McLaughlin and most of the "A" team won't race again until the gun goes off at the Class 4 district meet on Oct. 22.
"We keep our eye on the postseason," SLUH coach Joe Porter said.
"The thing is the fewer races you run, the more time you can spend on training," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin and his teammates don't live in a bubble. They know their racing schedule is the exception rather than the rule.
"We went to a camp (at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater) over the summer, and there were teams there that race twice a week," McLaughlin said.
Porter, and before him, Jim Linhares, have sold the Jr. Billikens on the strategy of training first and racing second. Porter's argument is compelling: Climb aboard and race for state medals.
There is no Class 4 program in the area as successful as SLUH. It has two state titles, two second-place finishes in the last five years and has been in the top eight at the state meet each of the last 10 years.
Porter said the Jr. Bills manage just fine without an extra three or four races each season. "We really feel like those workouts give them enough," he said.
While committed to training over racing through the first half of the year - "We've got to learn to race in the few races we have," Porter said - SLUH schedules enough events that it can move runners in and out of the "A" or "B" lineups when needed.
"Sometimes when guys need a race, we have those races (scheduled), and we run them in those," Porter said.
That could come up this week, if SLUH wants one more race for standout Nathan Rubbelke. The senior, capable of being the No. 1, 2 or 3 running in the lineup down the stretch, missed last week's conference championships with an injury.
As good as SLUH has been in the last decade, not many programs around the area have fully adopted the Jr. Bills' less-is-more approach. While some have trimmed the number of events, few are bold as SLUH and willing to head into the postseason with only three races.
While Porter and the Jr. Bills keep their own counsel when it comes to training, SLUH is on the look out for ideas it can adapt to its program. Last week, it decided to give one of O'Fallon's techniques a test run. A time or two each season, Burnett has his runners pencil in a race plan that includes taking a risk - start fasters, finish harder, trade in running with the Nos. 15-20 guys for running with the Nos. 10-14 guys.
"They told us that, and we really liked it and decided to try that here," Porter said.
The experiment may take a little number-crunching to fully appreciate what worked up and down the lineup, but it's impossible not to like SLUH's approach - and its result: The Jr. Bills swept the MCC competition, winning the varsity, JV and freshman races with room to spare.
A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE
A new group of runners are wrestling with an old issue: How to keep track of the real and imagined challengers who are, what, 10 steps behind? Ten meters? Ten miles?
Allie Sweatt of Edwardsville won for the first time at the recent Madison County Championships. The sophomore said it was equally wonderful and unusual to be racing at the front of the pack. One of the things that made it unusual was the nagging temptation to turn around and see just how big - and safe - her lead was.
Sweatt never gave into the temptation. She never peeked.
"It's like a runner's rule: You're not supposed to look back," she said. "It slows you down."
Melissa Brown of Oakville has had a breakout season. The sophomore won at Lutheran South and at Parkway Central, and she's getting the hang of looking back without turning around.
"When we go around turns I try to look back and see where everyone is," she said.
When he runs track, Parkway Central's Eric Sivill said there is a sound to a race. There are foot steps, there's the sound of a runner's breathing. Those things don't translate to cross country for Sivill, another runner with a couple wins under his belt this year.
"I can't hear footsteps," he said.
Instead, he tries to use the crowd as a gauge. "The louder the cheering, probably the closer the race is," he said.
Noah Kauppila of Marquette is another who still is working out a plan for sensing what's going on around him. One of the area's bright, young talents, Kauppila won his first 5,000-meter event in a head-to-head dual with Rock Bridge star Caleb Wilfong at the Parkway West Invitational. Typically, he said, there always is someone to chase. That wasn't true for the last mile at the Parkway West race. Kaupppila moved by Wilfong and into the lead.
Suddenly, the race had an entirely new look. Now, instead of worrying what was ahead of him, Kauppila had to wonder what was behind him. How close was the Rock Bridge runner? When was his finishing kick coming?
"I really couldn't tell (about Wilfong) when I had the lead," he said.
Not knowing turned out to be the fuel that fired Kauppila through the last mile. The more he worried, the stronger he became.
"It was more a case of running out of fear," he said.
FAB FRESHMEN
This is not the definitive list of the area's best freshmen, but this listing includes the top freshman finishers in most of the area's races thus far:
Girls -- Hanna Long, Eureka (winner at Forest Park, Fox, Ladue and the Suburban West), Sophia Racette, Nerinx Hall (winner at Fleet Feet South and Edwardsville, second at Parkway West); Elise Marker, Villa Duchesne; Karsten Klotzer, Lutheran North; Carolyn White, Festus; Maddy Brown, Parkway West; Brittany Kennedy, Francis Howell Central; Erica Bailey, Edwardsville; Becca Hairer, Affton; Hannah Baehr, Owensville; Adrianna Roberts, Waterloo; Amy Marx, Francis Howell; Sarah Harig, St. Dominic; Tami Cardenas, O'Fallon; and Gretchen Engelbrecht, Metro East Lutheran.
Boys -- Grant Dolan, Marquette; Drew Hutchens, Ladue; Shayn Jackson, SLUH; Henry Huff, Lutheran St. Charles; Eric Luebke, Potosi; Michael Howell, Barat; Sean Conlin, Fort Zumwalt East; Charlie Hook, Kirkwood; Chris Martin, Mascoutah; Thomas Gross, Potosi; Alex Reed, Collinsville; Jerod Broadbooks, Eureka; Brydon Groves-Scott, Edwardsville; Jeddah Gallego, Roxana; Kurt Dostal, St. Charles West; Vincente Blanco, DuBourg; Lance Mueller, Waterloo.
