In what sounds completely crazy to type out, this summer marks 20 years since I started running competitively. In 1992, I was getting ready to start my freshman year at DeSales with no real clue about cross country or track. All my dreams lay on the basketball court where I thought I was going to spend my high school years. Oh, what a journey that followed.
I cannot remember what the day was or even what day of the week it was, though I can remember everything else. I was as nervous as one would expect, new school with a few friends following along from my grade school, the now defunct St. Luke Catholic School. None of them were running cross country so I did not even have them at first, which is funny because two boys from the class ahead of me had run cross country that year before, but neither returned. Luckily for me, one of those two was one of my really good friends, Chad Ruffra. He had told me about it and I thought it sounded alright and it would help get me in shape for basketball.
Back to the first day, Coach Paul Wise then an Assistant Coach told us we were running Park Road in Iroquois Park. My knowledge of Iroquois Park was zero, so that meant nothing to me. As I later found out and ran many miles on it, Park Road was a 3.5 mile loop around the park. Perfect for short easy run days. My freshmen group had several runners in it and four of us went out together running. Coach Wise had a bike that he rode back and forth checking on the runners all throughout high school. Every time he took off around the corner and was out of sight, we stopped and walked. The idea of running over three miles was pure crazy talk and it was not even possible (or at least I thought so that day.) Now I cannot remember finishing that run, but I can remember facing that ugly hill two miles into the road. Obviously, it was not that bad as I came back and so did the other freshmen that day.
I started with no clue about cross country and I can honestly say I did not love it at first. The Louisville area races in the 1990s mainly ran 4K's for the freshmen. I ran more 4K's than 5K's that year. It helps that the Varsity girls ran the 4K, so the course was prepped anyways. I joined a team that was up and coming, we had two All-State runners (Jon Kramer and Aaron Harbolt.) We finished 6th in Class AAA my freshmen year. Coming back from the Kentucky State Cross Country Meet in 1992, I can remember Jon Kramer asking me if I was going to run the next year and I said yes, but it was an unsure yes.
Now that basketball career never happened as I had thought, so I did keep on running. I did track in the spring of 1993 (in fact St. Xavier's Coach Chuck Medley scanned some results from a frosh/sophomore meet at St. X that had me in them running the 1600/3200.) Going into my sophomore year, there was no doubt I was running. First day of practice my sophomore year, I ran a PR in the mile during my first mile repeat. The rest is history as I ran three more years of cross country at DeSales and loved it. We were Regional Champions 3 of the 4 years and twice in the top 8 at the Class AAA State Meet. I loved practices and meets. If you want someone to fall in love with cross country, just take them to a great meet. The atmosphere alone win them over. I loved the competition and numbers. I could get lost in the PRs, splits, and results back then. Only if there had been a MileSplit back then!!! (seriously, Jason Byrne, you were 11 when I started high school...you should have made it happen.)
Now 20 years later, I have spent countless hours running and/or involving myself in running via coaching 7 years of XC/track or managing KYtrackXC.com for the last 7 1/2 years. All I can say is thank God for Chad Ruffra deciding to run cross country his freshmen year, and that Coaches Paul Wise (love of stats), Bill Luyster (computer programming in DOS), and Tony Medley (constant guidance and advice I still follow today) made the sport something I wanted to do and attempt to excel at.