By Michael Newman

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York High School announced the retirement of Cross Country Coach Joe Newton in 2016. It was a bittersweet year. In his 56 years as the York Head Coach, his teams won 28 state championships. It is a number that won't be reached in this cross country crazy state. The reason the interest is so big is because of what Mr. Newton did at this high school in Elmhurst, Illinois.

I’m always approached by runners and coaches from various schools across the state when I am at meets. The common question that they asked me was: "What was it like to run for Mr. Newton."

I was a member of the York High School Cross Country Team from 1976 to 1979. I was named co-captain of the team in 1979. Not too many guys get that honor. I was fortunate that my teammates thought so highly of me that I was chosen.

In 2013, I decided to write about my junior year of cross country at the school. I wanted to do something different and unique. I was sitting at my desk and looked up at the wall where I started staring at a poster that was created for a team that I was on in 1978. I realized that this fall would be 38 years since my friends and I went on a journey, running together under coach Joe Newton, that took us to the Illinois State Cross Country Meet. After the state meet in 2016, we met at a restaurant in Elmhurst to reminisce. Our gathering felt like we had just left each other after the 1978 season had ended. Those bonds never die.

Do you think that Joe Newton would have let me do this back in 1978? I doubt it. Before Mr. Newton passed away in 2017, he did get a chance to read this story. “How did you remember so much of what happened that year,” he asked me. “You really need to publish this.”

Put Your Hand on Seven: A Journey to a State Championship goes through the weekly happenings of what I was doing in the fall of my junior year at York High School in Elmhurst, Ill. I went back and looked at training notes that I took and also XC yearbooks that I had. I also looked at a box of newspaper clippings that my parents saved for me.

That box came in handy as I have tried to piece together how a group of 12 individuals eventually formed a tight unit of seven that dreamed the impossible. No one thought that we could achieve what we did. My teammates and I thought otherwise.

A few of you out there can understand when I say how tough it was to win a state title as a group. There are so many sacrifices that you have to make. When your friends were out on Saturday night, I made sure I was getting my rest. That is how important this “crusade” was for us.

Each week’s blog will come out on Thursday except the week of the state meet where I had to split it up into two different sections.

I feel bad now that I have still not moved to the point to have this published. My dad mentioned the same thing four years ago after I published it online for the first time. He passed away in April of this year so my guilt that I have not accomplished in getting this published has engulfed me. Some day it will happen. I promise.

I hope you enjoy it. This is dedicated to all the parents of the 1978 team for all the sacrifices that they made for us, to Mr. Joe Newton who coached us to become great runners and greater men, and to Phil Williams, Rob Ragusin, Mike Wagner, Mike Frega, David Haller, Jim Hedman, and the rest of the York High School Cross Country Team of 1978.

It is a bond that will remain with us for the rest of our lives. It is a memory to be coached by Mr. Newton that lives in our hearts forever.