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Saturday, October 4, 2008
Punishment or Pleasure
Greater Louisville, KY
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By: Josh Cook
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Photo(s) By: Shelley Rassenfoss
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These top cross country athletes started running for various reasons, but they all keep running for the finish.
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“My favorite part is the end, just knowing that you’ve finished a race and you’ve given it your best effort. Cross country is a tough sport. You push yourself as hard as you can because that’s the best feeling, the end.”– Emme McAtee
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Emme McAtee began running because she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her older sister.
Emma Brink was influenced by her parents,
Stacey Eden did it to stay in shape for BMX racing and Steve Mize started running because he wanted to fit in and make friends.
There are plenty of reasons to run, but there are only a few common denominators that some of the top cross country runners in the Louisville area share. They are both physical and mental toughness, as well as self-motivation, and maybe a slight streak of craziness to boot.
How else can you explain someone who pushes his or her body through the pain of training for five-kilometer races? Some might argue that cross country is the hardest high school sport. Others might call it penalty.
“It’s everybody else’s punishment, but we’re volunteering for that punishment,” Sacred Heart Academy coach Rick Heim says of long runs.
Heim has two of the top volunteers—er, runners—in the state on his team—Brink, a sophomore, and McAtee, a senior.
Brink is the defending Class AAA state champion in cross country and the reigning AAA champ in the 3,200-meter run in track.
“Brinky, the basis of her success is that great mental drive,” Heim says. “She’s always relaxed, she takes things in stride.”
But don’t be fooled by Brink’s easygoing nature, Heim says, because behind that bubbly, easy-smiling persona lies a big-time competitor.
“The thing about her is she loves a challenge,” he says. “When other great female runners come from other schools, it is seen as a challenge and not a pressure situation. This attitude is what separates the great ones—having the ability to put the competition in the correct spot in your thinking. Call it mental tenacity, call it hunger, call it race maturity, Emma has got it and that makes her dangerous when her competitors take a look at her, because she isn’t the one that is nervous and scared.”
Brink, who began running because her dad, David, ran and her mother, Julie, took up the sport too, has continued to prove that early this season. She won the Tiger Run and the Rumble through the Jungle before finishing second to a runner from Carmel, Indiana in the Trinity-Valkyrie Invitational.
“It’s what you run for,” Brink says of the competition.
“If you want to get better you have to run with better runners,” adds McAtee, who runs with Brink every day in practice. Â
McAtee was sixth at the AAA state cross country meet last year, then turned it on during track season. She finished second to Brink in the 3,200 at the state track meet, and has picked up this summer and fall where she left off in the spring. She was third in the Tiger Run and second, behind her teammate, in the Rumble through the Jungle.
“I love running, running’s my life,” says McAtee, who took up the sport because her older sister, Kelly, was a runner.
McAtee is as friendly as she is strong-willed and faithful. She relies on the latter quite a bit when she runs, before (when she leads the Valkyries in prayer), during and especially after each race.
“My favorite part is the end, just knowing that you’ve finished a race and you’ve given it your best effort,” McAtee says. “Cross country is a tough sport. You push yourself as hard as you can because that’s the best feeling, the end. If you want to do well you’ve got to go hard all the way, because the race isn’t over until you hit the finish line.”
And while McAtee will finish her career at Sacred Heart before Brink does, the two will run together forever in Heim’s mind.
“They are two of the best kids I’ve coached in 18 years,” he says. “Both are very driven and self-motivated.”
The same is the case for Eden who took up BMX bike racing at the age of 5, then running a short time later to keep up his physical fitness.
“I’ve been in competitive sports pretty much my whole life, and I think that’s helped me out in running,” says Eden, a junior at Shelby County High School.
“He’s not really intimidated by much,” Eden’s coach Randy McDowell adds. “What I admire about him is his ability to go for broke, lay it all on the line and every other cliché’ you can come up with.”
Part of that comes from BMX racing, and part of that just comes with being a runner, according to Eden.
“Runners are insane,” he says. “You’ve got to be a little insane to physically push your body harder, and farther, than it’s willing to go. Really, you’ve got to be crazy to run.”
Eden was sixth at the state meet last year as a sophomore. He missed the Tiger Run to compete in the BMX NBL Grand Nationals, and he finished second in the Shelby County Invitational before winning the Rumble through the Jungle. In the latter race, Eden laid back, almost unnoticeable because of his small frame (he’s 5-foot-6), before sprinting away at the end, his shaggy blonde hair whipping behind him as he crossed the finish line.
“He’s certainly not the biggest kid out there, or the strongest, but his smaller stature is to his advantage in some cases, especially on a hilly course,” McDowell says. “He’s fun to coach because he is such a free spirit. He’s certainly an inspiration to others on our team. He’s fun to watch.”
As is Mize, the Male senior who appreciates the cerebral aspect of running just as much as the physical aspect.
“So much of it is mental,” says Mize, a senior at Male, who joined the cross country team as a freshman to meet people and find his niche. “In some sports you get the ball and you have to run. In cross country, nobody’s giving you the ball and chasing you, you have to do it yourself. You don’t have to go all out, but it just depends on how much you want to grow from it.”
And growth isn’t always easy.
“Ten out of 100 days you don’t feel good when you’re running. It’s just one of those things you learn to deal with,” says Mize, who was 10th at state last year. “Some days you wake up and just don’t want to run.”
That could have been the case in mid-September when Jefferson County Public Schools were out an entire week due to the power outages caused by a wild wind storm. It wasn’t for Mize. He kept running.
“Some days you don’t really want to run, but you do it because you know there are other guys out there running too,” Mize says. “Then some days you come out and feel great and it’s all worth it. It really makes it feel like it’s all worthwhile.”
You see, one person’s punishment is another person’s pleasure.
Josh Cook is a freelance writer living in the Louisville area.
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