Season, not state, define impact Edwardsville's Sweatt will leave behind
You do not have to invest an extraordinary amount of time to appreciate how talented a runner Garrett Sweatt is.
Most days, 15 minutes will do it. That is all it takes the Edwardsville senior to do his thing. Sometimes, even less.
Step to the line, race three miles, cross the line first. There's your 15 minutes.
Three miles is not an easy race. Stand at the finish line at any of the dozens of races area schools run, and you will get an eyeful of how difficult a three-mile run is. It is high drama when legs and lungs protest each step.
Of course, it looks impossibly easy when Sweatt does it.
Sweatt, 18, is the Post-Dispatch All-Metro runner of the year in boys cross country. Not because he makes it seem easy, but because he makes it seem thrilling. The 5-foot-11, 137-pound Edwardsville runner is a guy chasing wins and records.
More often than anyone in the area, Sweatt did more than chase wins and records -- he caught them. He won nine races during the fall season. He posted two of the five fastest three-mile times in Illinois, and beat all of the best runners in Illinois.
Well, he beat all but one. Only two-time Class 2A state champ Michael Clevenger can say he didn't lose to Sweatt, and when those two dueled at the Peoria Central Invitational, it was perhaps the best race of the year in Illinois. Clevenger ran the fastest regular-season time, 14:18, while Sweatt logged a 14:21, the fourth fastest.
"I'm happy with how my season went," Sweatt said.
Happy, yes. Thrilled, no.
Thrilled would have described a season ending with Sweatt wearing the Class 3A championship medal. That didn't happen. Not quite. After leading the state race through the first 1¾ miles, he finished fourth, crossing the line in 14 minutes 29 seconds.
A fabulous race for almost any of the 11,000 boys cross country participants in Illinois left Sweatt wanting.
"Winning the state championship was one of my goals from middle school into high school," he said.
Sweatt knew the title was within his reach. But he knew it was within reach of half a dozen other standouts, too
"We all knew that on any given day anybody could be standing there with the gold medal," he said. "If we had run it the next day, I might have won it. If we had run it the next week, somebody else could have won it."
Sweatt ached to win the state title. He races to win.
"It's always nice to win," he said. "Winning is one of the best feelings in the world."
Winning, however, is not the entirety of Sweatt's world.
"That was just one race," he said. "I'm not going to let it define me."
Good thing. Because Sweatt's world is longer than a three-mile long cross country course, taller than the high hopes he carries into every season, shinier than a state medal.
A straight-A student who ranks in the top 10 in his class, he is nearly too good to be true. He is the Boy Scout pledge in spikes. He is the guy other high school runners watch and younger runners want to be.
Sweatt understands. He did the same thing as he came up through coach George Petrylak's Edwardsville program. For him, the hero was Stephen Pifer, the Edwardsville star who won state titles in cross country and track and went on earn all-America honors at Colorado.
"There's always guys who look and say, 'That's him,'" Sweatt said. "It's just like me saying, 'Oh, that's Stephen Pifer.'"
Pifer, a 2003 Edwardsville grad, and Sweatt share the Edwardsville three-mile record for cross county. Both turned in 14:20 times as seniors. That 14:20 race will keep Sweatt in the Edwardsville record books for a long while. In the spring, Sweatt will take a run at Pifer's 8:58 record in the 3,200 meters.
"It's in the realm," Petrylak said of a run at the metric two-mile record.
Records, to be certain, are terrific forget-me-nots. But Petrylak said there is little chance Sweatt will be forgotten when he runs off to college and beyond.
"He's an outstanding person," Petrylak said. "I'll miss him and be forever grateful for everything he brought to the program and the school."
