North Shore, Illinois and the sport of Cross Country

The most common request that comes into my office is some version of "something more needs to be done for my sport". The uniforms need to be better, the facility needs to be better, more people need to come to our games, you (meaning me) have not attended enough of our games or matches, we need a pep rally for our team, etc, etc. There is one sport where requests like these never happen and that is Cross Country. Well, actually there was one but I will get to that later.

Cross Country running at North Shore is about as minor as minor sports get in our high school. In fact some people in our community sometimes ask me in the fall "how's track going." and I have to correct them that we are in Cross Country season -- track is in the spring. Despite being minor in the larger sport world, members of the Cross Country team are often the last athletes standing in the fall and that is true once again this year as Katie Glew runs at 9 AM and Tommy McHugh runs at 10 AM this Saturday in the Illinois State Cross Country Meet.

Cross Country in the state of Illinois beyond North Shore Country Day School is a big deal. There are larger states in this nation -- like California and Texas -- that have larger state meets. But the history of cross country in this state rivals any other state and there is a good argument to be made that Illinois produces more great cross country runners than any other state. 

In my opinion, the history of Cross Country in this state is strong because of 3 reasons -- a park, an athlete and a coach. 

The park is Detweiller Park in Peoria which is where the state meet is run every year and has been run since 1970. The course there is 3 miles in length and is legendary for its speed and design. The course record for boys is 13:50 and the course record for girls is 15:54. The standard of excellence at Detweiller for boys is breaking 15 minutes and the standard for excellence for girls is breaking 17 minutes. This is notoriously difficult as in my 20 years at North Shore only one boy from the Independent School League has broken 15 minutes and no girls have broken 17 minutes. But where ever an Illinois runner goes after high school when they meet another Illinois runner they compare Detweiller times. Near the finish of the Detweiller course there is a rock which commemorates the contributions of Bob LaCroix to the state meet. LaCroix ran the first state meet to be held at Detweiller in 1970 and among the rocks inscriptions is a quote I like to reflect on every time I go to Detweiller. It says "Real Winners are Ordinary People with Extraordinary Determination." There is probably no sport I know that rewards determination better than Cross Country. 

There are other famous cross country courses around the country. On the east coast there is Van Cortland Park in New York City, Belmont Plateau in Philadelphia, Holmdel Park in New Jersey. And on the west coast there is Balboa Park in San Diego, Mount SAC outside LA. But to those of us in Illinois there is nothing like Detweiller, and I would argue that because the state meet has been run at Detweiller for now 46 years, there is no other course in this country that has the depth of history for such an important race that includes so many high school athletes. 

The athlete who has had the greatest impact on cross country in our state is Craig Virgin from Lebanon, Illinois. Virgin won the state meet twice setting the still standing state meet course record in 1972. Only 2 athletes in 45 years have come within 5 seconds of that time. Virgin attended the University of Illinois after high school, won numerous national titles, and made three Olympic teams. However, in running circles, he is best known for winning the World Cross Country Championships twice. The World Cross Country Championships is considered the toughest race in the world because it yearly brings in the best milers to marathoners on one day to race each other over hill and dale. Virgin's record in that race has never been matched by another American. 

Craig Virgin still shows up to almost every state meet and seems to be hoping somebody will break his record. Here I am meeting Virgin with my friend Bill Hague before the 2010 State meet

Me, Craig Virgin and Bill Hague

There have been many other notable Illinois runners including a number of Olympians. But to me and many others, Virgin is Illinois's greatest cross country runner and arguably America's greatest cross country runner too.

The coach is Joe Newton of York High School in Elmhurst, Illinois. Coach Newtown was not only a ground breaking coach in cross country, he was a ground breaking high school coach regardless of his sport. What he is best known for is winning 28 State Cross Country titles in over 50 years of coaching at York. But he did all sorts of other things. He was one of the first coaches to write a training book for other high school coaches -- entitled The Long Green Line originally written in 1969. This was the first of three books on training Newton wrote. By the time I started coaching in the mid-1980's, the work that Newton got out of York athletes was legendary across the country. Many of his athletes literally ran 1000 miles in the summer. Even as a collegiate athlete I never approached that number. He is the only high school cross country or track coach to serve on an Olympic team. Despite the hard work he demanded of his athletes, his team's rosters were always over 100 boys and at times reached 200. As you can imagine, he is best known as a charismatic motivator. In a documentary on his life, Newton is filmed sharing many of his views on success as an athlete and as a person. Here is one of my favorites. 

It is these life lessons that kept so many York athletes involved in cross country even though a Varsity team is only seven runners.

This year is Joe Newton's last year coaching at the State Meet. He is now in his late 80's. The day to day coaching of York athletes has been passed on to Coach Charlie Kern and Newton spends most of his year in Arizona. But the legacy that Newton leaves is one best seen not just at York but at other high schools like Neuqua Valley, Sandberg, Lyons Township, Hinsdale Central, Palatine, Minooka, Yorkville... I could go on ....where outstanding cross country programs developed in part to chase and defeat York.

So Saturday, I am excited to watch our Raider athletes compete in one of the most historic state competitions anywhere. But I am also excited to celebrate cross country in Illinois which brings me back to those requests that come into my office.

There are all sorts of good reasons for many of the requests, but they often have to do with some aspect of greater community attention. Sports is our most public interaction with the world and attention is more important every year for our athletic program to be considered viable to prospective and current families as well as the increasing number of students we have leaving us to compete collegiately.

At a progressive school, though, we are supposed to be teaching the superiority of internal rather than external motivation and the life lessons that sport teaches. So I think its especially telling that the one cross country request in the 15 plus years of the sport at North Shore that has come into my office has been "we would like to be challenged more." That's cross country -- low profile, minor in the world of sports, but a sport that reflects life.