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Tuesday, November 4, 2008
The New-found Knights
St. Paul, MN
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By: Nate Hackney
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Photo(s) By: Tom Carothers
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“Hey Mom, how tall am I?” shouts pre-teen Harding High School cross-country runner Matt Bondeson, bending his neck away from the phone slightly.
As Kim Bondeson proceeds to measure her son, whom she described as “going on thirteen,” two things can be noted about the Bondeson family.
First, it is plain to see that the Bondeson’s are a tight-knit family. Seventh-grader Matt, freshman Alex Bondeson and junior Robert Griffin have a bond that seems to course through their veins just as deeply as the ambition that has brought them success running for the Knights. Their parents, Kim and Dan Bondeson, are at almost every meet cheering them on and helping the team any way they can.
Kim and Dan seem to be living a dream just as much as the boys. “To be quite honest, it’s amazing to see all three of them out there together,” said the beaming mother. “They all blow me away with their improvement and how supportive they are of each other.”
The second thing to note is the potential that all three young men possess in a sport that they just started this fall. After a spring and summer so intensely filled with baseball that Kim said, “Sunday was our only day off and some weeks they practiced on Sundays,” a friend convinced Alex to go out for cross-country. Liking the challenge, Matt and Robert soon followed.
All three boys developed a liking for the sport and their astonishing improvement in the early weeks of the season saw freshman Alex ascending to varsity. Shortly after, his younger brother Matt got the call. He was told that he would see his first varsity race at the Swain Invitational in Duluth, as part of a field of that included 160 runners from 22 high schools in the upper Midwest and Canada. After a sleepless night, Matt rose to the occasion finishing a respectable 137th, the fourth-best time for a Harding squad that featured two seniors, three juniors and his brother Alex.
Robert, whom both Kim and Knights’ coach Vicky Knutsen describe as “the hardest worker of the three,” is one of the faster runners on the Junior Varsity squad. He has continued to consistently improve his personal best times, no doubt motivated to join his brothers on varsity. “It makes me want to work a lot harder and catch up to them,” he said. Knutsen says with his work ethic and steady improvement, there is a good possibility he will run for the varsity in his senior season.
Anyone who knows the boys will open the conversation by stressing how different the three of them are. Knutsen describes the youngest Matt, “Like a puppy, just happy to be there and happy to help anybody in any way.” His mother calls him, “an old soul.” Both describe Alex as a bit of a rebel, in a fairly harmless way, citing the green and orange mohawk he sported at the beginning of the season. Robert is the serious one, a good student who enjoys playing video games when not working on the cross-country course. As diverse as the brothers are, their common threads are more important - they take care of each other, laugh together and push each other to become better runners.
As Kim lines up the tape measure to assess the height of her youngest son, she gives some motherly advice to “stand up straight and look straight ahead.”
With advice like that and support from each other, Matt -- who measured at 5-foot-8 -- and his brothers should have no problem making strides on the Harding cross-country team.
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