MONDAY MORNING FINISH LINE

September 13, 2021

By Michael Newman

[email protected]

Cross Country is in the blood. Once you get involved in the sport you just can’t get it out of your system.

I was working Thursday afternoon and I received a phone call from my mom. She was up at our family cottage in Michigan for the week. She never calls when she is up there, I thought. Something must be wrong.

“I just want to tell you that there is a cross-country meet that is going to happen this afternoon at the park next to us,” she said. My mom is in her 80’s now but the excitement in her voice told me that that urge was still in her heart. She was at almost all my meets with my Dad when I was running and then with my brothers that ran after me.

I would always go to our cottage during the summer. The lake was always inviting. The park next to us back then was just beach dunes. Now it is more of a park. My first response was where are they going to run a course in that park? I knew every inch of those grounds. Where was the starting line? How did they do the finish. My mom did not know but she was going to watch.

For me while I was driving down to Peoria early on Saturday morning, those questions engulfed my mind. Where was the starting line?

My mom called back on Sunday and told me all about it. Now I need to e-mail the high school coach that is hosting the meet and see if I can get a course map. It will drive me crazy if I don’t.

Cross Country is always in my blood.

I think everyone knows that my favorite cross-country course is that piece of ground that has the Peoria hills to the west of it and Route 29 to the east. I have been following high school cross country in the state since I was in junior high in 1975. You do the math.

Getting to the course early was a goal of mine on Saturday. I wanted to see the sunrise over the trees to the east of us. It symbolized the dawn of a new season leaving what we went through behind. It was rebirth in a way of high school running in Illinois with Detweiller Park the hub of all of that.

I try to do something different every year when I go down to the state meet on that Friday. One year I took a nap in the middle of the infield. I had a picnic in 2019 in the same place on the course that I did in 2019.

It sounds insane but for me it is not. Some call it insanity. I call it passion. You can tell from what I am telling you now.

Cross Country is in the Blood.

Random thoughts about last Saturday

These are the things that happen that don’t make it to Twitter or social media. Some sneak in. I am so lazar focused when the races start at the meet. I don’t Tweet. I’m obsessed with what is around me. I can’t be a slave to technology. You want to know what is going on, come to the meet I am at. You will enjoy yourself.

These are some of my random thoughts. They are in no order of importance.

1 – Dan Iverson, the Girls Coach at Naperville North, told me about his star runner Lucy Westlake and how she was a great mountain climber. After she won her race, I got the opportunity to talk with her. I found out that she has climbed the highest point in each of the 50 states. Her 50 one was the highest point in the United States, Mt. Denali in Alaska. I won’t spoil her thunder. Go watch her interview on ilxctf.runnerspace.com. You will have a smile on your face like I did afterwards.

2 – I never get a chance to chat with Akili Parekh of Latin School on camera. We’ve had talks at meets throughout his career but never on camera. I am usually talking to his famous sister Ava. Saturday was the opportunity to talk with him along with his teammate Ryan Hardiman. Halfway through the interview, a random person walked between me and Akili and Ryan. A minute later, it happened again.  I was trying not to laugh. My interview subjects were doing double takes. We laughed afterwards. I knew that we were back in a real cross-country season with those kinds of things happening.

3 – While the open races were going on, I was getting something to drink and had a croissant just to have something in my subject. There was a runner that I thought was watching the race. She was, in reality,  waiting to talk with me. She wanted to tell me that she ran a huge persona best in her race. She thought I would appreciate something like that. I did. I love to see runners at meets I am at do something that they did not expect. It sounded she was in the same area with what she had done. I got home and worked until midnight. I looked for her profile on Athletic.Net. I noticed that Ella Miller, a junior from Trinity High School, had run in the 21-minute range last year as a sophomore. She ran 19:51 to be the team’s top runner in Saturday’s race. It was 44 seconds faster than she had run at a meet on September 1. Hard work will bring you so many great things as you proceed in life. Talk to Ella Miller. She can tell you her story.

4 – Two runners who had no cross-country experience entering this year had great races on Saturday. Beatrix Gilson of New Trier I had noticed at Hinsdale the week before finishing sixth. She was closing on race winner Lucy Westlake and missed by two seconds. We will see some great thigs from her this season and beyond. The other runner was Evan Horgan of Belvidere North. I was getting into position at the finish line and saw former Belvidere North Coach Troy Yunk now retired there to watch his old team. I asked him about Horgan. I had never heard of him before this fall. Yunk told me that he played basketball for Belvidere North. He ran track for the first-time last spring. Horgan had a 2:05 best for 800-meters. Here he was approaching the finish line in fourth. Yunk then told me he had never run cross-country before. He was not a part of the team’s summer program. The team’s first legal practice was his first distance workout. Now he is the team’s top runner. Amazing but then again not. It is a matter of putting his mind to it and going after it. He certainly is right now.

And finally…

Last Saturday was September 11. It was the 20 anniversary of the terrorist attacks that hit America on that Tuesday morning. I did not know anyone who was at the Pentagon, or on the planes, or in the twin towers. 60 Minutes on CBS last night dedicated the show on looking back on that horrific day. It is tough to watch but you should watch it.

Let me tell you my recollection of that days and beyond that.

It was the first day of school in a new school for my boys. For my youngest, it was his first day in any school setting. My then wife and daughter went to the grocery store. The clerk that was checking us out was telling us that she could not believe what was happening in New York. We rushed home and saw it play out like everyone else was in this country.

The first thing I did was call the school. It was a new school for us and a private school. They explained how they were handling the situation locking down the school. We were free to come get them, but they will be safe there. No one knew what was happening in the world at that moment. It put us at ease.

The kids wanted to watch Cartoon Network after we picked them up. The only thing that was on in this day was the news. They accidentally saw what happened and then questions started to come out. All I could say is that some bad people had done something bad and that a lot of people were hurt. My 11-year-old got the idea. My then six-year-old took a little more explaining.

There was no school the next day. They wanted to go see their grandparents. We traveled south on 294 to Lombard passing O’Hare International Airport on the way. “Where are the planes,” Matthew, my 6-year-old said. They were at the airport just sitting there. Having grown up in the landing path for the airport the silence was eerie.

20 years later, we need the reaction that happened the few months after September 11. There was a sense of patriotism I had never seen. My grandfather told me about the end of World War II when I was young. People were patriotic. People were civil to each other. There was love for another human being that we had not seen before. The government came together.

Look at where we are at now.

We need to look back at the lessons that we learned during that period. We do not need another terrorist attack. We do need togetherness.