Soccer: Friend or Foe? (Part 2)

January 2006
 

[This article was originally written back in 2001.  Part 1 was published on NTS. You can find it in the archives on Phil's & Penny's Page. For some reason Part 2 never got published. I found that out a few years back when I got an e-mail from a parent back east somewhere, asking where Part 2 was? At the time I didn't know! The written piece was on an old computer I had given away and I couldn't locate a copy. I only recently found a copy that had been buried among my writings, so I decided to finish what I started. I have updated it a bit, but it is essentially the same piece I wrote in 2001 when I was still an active coach.] 

     Is there an answer to the popularity of soccer and its potential for turning kids away from cross country? Yes! The answer lies in making our sport more attractive to the athletes. We already have several things going for us. First, everyone gets to compete: no one rides the bench. There is always a race for every athlete: varsity, frosh-soph, or JV. Second, cross country is a coed sport. And high school boys and girls do like each other and like to be around each other, as we already know! The successful high school programs take advantage of that fact. They train the kids together, and they go to meets and take trips together as a total team. Boys cheer on the girls and vice versa. [It is especially applicable if you have a "stud" girl who can train with the boys. To quote Jordan Hasay, the 2005 Footlocker girls champion: I train with the boys a lot. They're cool with that's Jordan ran 5K at Footlocker Championships in 17:05, not a bad time for most guys!]

     To fellow coaches: we need to make our sport "more fun", as the kids say. Instead of by-the-numbers interval workouts and long runs around the campus or the neighborhood, be creative. Try using game-day activities like scavenger hunts, Capture the Flag, and heaven forbid soccer games. The old game of Hare and Hounds is an excellent endurance workout in disguise. [When I was coaching, Friday was usually game day. Relay races are interval workouts in the purest sense if they are conducted right. Yes, it takes planning and, no, it's not as easy as just sending the kids out-and-back or having them run 10 X 400 on the track. But it keeps the kids coming back for more, year after year. It also saves their legs by confining them to the track or grassy fields instead of pounding the pavement.

     Find neat places to run. Take your kids to Red Rock or Mt. Charleston to get out of the heat and away from the pollution of the valley floor. I know several coaches who take their runners up to Lee Canyon early in the season before school starts or on a Saturday or Sunday to run the Bristlecone Pine Trail or to Mack's Canyon to run that dirt road leading to the campground (six miles round trip). Yes, it can be a logistics nightmare; yes, it takes extra effort. But it works. If your school is close enough to a decent-size park, have them run to and from the park for their warm-up and cool down and do the rest of the workout in the park. But, again, put variety into the workouts. Consider cross-training workouts as well. On hot days in early season an aerobics workout at a local pool or fitness center is terrific. [When I was coaching, at various times, I used the outdoor pool at Garside, the indoor Municipal Pool on Bonanza and LV Blvd., and backyard pools at my kids' homes.] Bike and run workouts are also fun and challenging for a Saturday morning practice. 

     Another thing, make your schedule of meets as attractive as possible, with as much variety as possible there as well. And take your kids out of town! And I don't mean just Mesquite, Boulder City or Laughlin (no offense Bruce or Lori). Take them to Huntington Beach or Dana Point and let them run in the Central Park Invitational or the Dana Hill Invitational and to the beach afterwards and/or Mt. SAC to run in the largest cross country high school invitational in the US If your team is good enough to get invited, go to the Great Bay Area Race in San Francisco as Centennial's girls did in 2001 or the Great American Cross Country Festival in North Carolina like Green Valley did in 2000 when Abby Miller was nationally ranked. [Just this past fall, 2005, Coach Momsen and Coach Welch took their Boulder City kids to the Iolani Invitational in Oahu, Hawaii, no entry fee for that one.] But too expensive?  Get the school to pay for it. (I'm kidding!) Yes, you've got to raise money, get parent support (financial as well as moral), and sell the kids on what you're doing. One huge carrot, of course, is a trip to State. Every odd year it is in the Reno area, and the school does pay for that. If your team or even part of it, individual runners, earns a trip to State, that's something you can sell to next year's team. [I have a hunch that recruiting at Boulder City will be a tad easier in 2006 if there is even a chance of another trip to the Hawaii.]

     Sell pride to your team. Make them feel that they are special. Buy team shirts and new uniforms every year. Buy quality sweats, not every year too expensive. But when you do buy them, buy sweats the kids will be proud to wear, not multipurpose sweats that have Track & Field splashed on the front. Buy a pair of new racing flats for every kid that earns a trip to State. (Find a parent or sponsor that will donate the money.) Give out a certificate or, even better, a tee shirt to your Cross Country Runner of the Week. Some schools already do that for Athlete of the Week in one, some, or all sports. If so, make sure your athletes share in the wealth.

Communicate!  Put out a weekly online newsletter for your team, which includes a schedule of workouts and meets for the upcoming week as well as results from the past week. Assuming your school has an athletics web site, your job gets easier. But make sure the info on that web site is up to date. (You can bet your bottom dollar that that web site has up-to-date stats on the football team!) If you don't want to do it yourself, find an athlete on your team who is in a computer class or journalism class and have him or her be your cross country reporter. But your weekly schedule of workouts is something that you should publish yourself online on the weekend and then pass out to your team on Monday so they know what you have planned for them for the upcoming week, as well have as a recap of results from the previous week. (The results in the RJ are spotty at best.) Parents, especially, appreciate it because they know beforehand when and where the meets for that week will be held. [This past fall I know of several parents who showed up at Bonanza High School for a meet during the week only to find out that Bonanza uses Angel Park as their home course.]

Sell team spirit. Plan team social gatherings. Have a pasta party at someone's house the night before that important race on Nevada Day. Make your Awards Banquet at the end of the season the highlight of the year. At the banquet give out an end-of-season Yearbook (with records, pictures, and articles from the school paper or local paper that relate to your team) to go with the Cross Country Handbook you gave them at the start of the season. (You did do that, right?) When you announce team captains for next year, consider giving the new captains an Ironman Timex or at least a running log as a symbol of their authority (and a reminder of their responsibilities).

Promote your program year round. In June, even before school lets out for the summer, set up Captain's Practices for returning runners and recruits from the track team, plus your incoming freshman. If you don't or can't show up for these workouts in June and July, hopefully, your captains will. Suffice it to say, you should try to show up whenever you can. The old referee's adage presence lends conviction was never more apropos. For athletes that will be out of town for part or all of the summer, have them communicate by e-mail or by sending you post cards. Ask them to let you know how their workouts are going. (You've already given them a summer running schedule, right?) One year I passed out pre-stamped, self-addressed cards. It was a waste of money, but I still think it was a good idea. And here's a biggie! In July or early August consider taking as many kids as possible to a scheduled running camp. It's best if you go with them. They're held all over the country, but the closest ones, from Las Vegas anyway, are in Flagstaff, Arizona; Lake Tahoe, California; and several sites in Utah and California, including camps on college campuses at BYU and Stanford. When I was coaching, every July from 1989 to 1999 I took athletes to a running camp. We went to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Carpinteria (just up from Santa Barbara), and Prescott, Arizona. Most of the camps were sponsored by Runner's Workshop and lasted five or six days. Some years I got dads to join me, and every year parents helped with the transportation. The kids themselves raised the money or I found a way. You get a team discount if you have a certain number of runners, and coaches usually go free if they go with their team. Did running camp provide team bonding? You better believe it. Good training? The best, especially if you're there to monitor it. Bottom line: the most successful cross country coaches work with their runners year round, not just from August to November. They recruit, raise money, and promote their programs 365 days a year. And when they do it right they more than hold their own with club soccer coaches.

My point is we don't have to give in to soccer. Cross country is a great sport. It's still the only high school sport that has a national championship for individual runners. It's called Footlocker. It consists of four regional qualifiers with the top eight boys and girls from each region going to the Nationals. (The Western Regional qualifier is held at Mt. SAC, another reason to take your team to Mt. SAC in October.) Nevada has fared well at Footlocker. Our own Mel Lawrence from Reno has been runner-up three years in a row. She gets another chance to win it all in December 2006 as a senior. And before that, back in the late 90’s, Green Valley's Abby Miller was a three-time finals qualifier, finishing as high as third in 1996 as a freshman. [Since I first wrote this article back in 2001, Nike has stepped in and added a Team Nationals as well. Technically, Nike Team Nationals are not about school teams, but "wink, wink" is there any doubt that the 2005 winners, the Saratoga XC Club from Saratoga Springs, NY, (boys) and the Hilton XC Club from Hilton, NY, (girls) weren't representing their respective high schools? The Saratoga Streaks XC Club, also from Saratoga Springs finished second in the girls race. There must be something in the water in upstate New York!]

So far I've been laying the heavy wood to coaches. You parents out there, what can you do? Two words: get involved. Help set up a booster club of parents. Make sure the school is providing the same kind of support for cross country as it does for football or basketball, or dare I say it soccer. And last but not least, if your daughter is playing club soccer as well as running cross country, don't let the soccer coach bully your child by demanding she attend all practices and matches. Better yet, tell him (or her) in no uncertain terms that cross country takes priority over soccer during cross country season.

Athletes: recruit your friends; talk up the sport; learn about it by putting a subscription to The Harrier on your birthday wish list, or whatever. Surf the web and discover dyestat.com if you haven't already. If you are playing club soccer and running cross country at the same time, good for you. But make sure you get plenty of rest and good luck. It is tough to do both at the same time. [That said, Christa Avena from Bishop Gorman did it and she was a State Champion in 2002.] Train smart; pace yourself.

Summing up, we who care about our sport need to take advantage of the fact that many of our runners get great conditioning playing soccer and not discourage them from playing soccer per se. If they're into soccer, encourage them to play soccer in the summer and the winter or even the spring, if they can somehow find a way to do that and not have it conflict with the track season. (That's another subject entirely.) But we also need to make cross country an attractive alternative to soccer so if a kid has to choose  us or them, [which will happen to all come 2007 so the rumor goes], we have a better than even shot at making it us. GOAL can mean winning at Footlocker as well as scoring the winning shot at a World Cup match.
 

 

What's Wrong with Cross Country in Southern Nevada?

I'm back. I have decided to weigh in on a topic that is hot at the moment among our cross country community here in Southern Nevada. It relates to the drubbing that the South took up at San Rafael Park in Reno on November 6th at the 2005 State Cross Country Championships. I hope my comments, some of which are clearly both sarcastic and satirical, will not offend anyone personally. If so I apologize in advance. It is not my intent to put anyone down.  However, I never have been comfortable with being politically correct; I like to “tell it like it is.” And that is risky in the world of journalism. It's one reason my second, no make that my third, career as a stringer reporter with the Las Vegas Review Journal was short in duration, one year to be exact. I may be retired from coaching, and for writing for the RJ, but I am not averse to criticism, so here goes.

 

 And speaking of the RJ, I shall begin with a clip from a recent Las Vegas RJ column discussing cross country in Southern Nevada. Did anyone besides me catch it?

 

“The Northern Conference is dominating state cross country. Southern coaches are wondering what must be done to reverse the trend. The numbers aren't pretty...Northern Conference boys have placed one-two the last two years. In the girls meet...it was really ugly. Northern Conference boys placed first through sixth and Northern Conference girls placed first through 10th.”

 

“But wait a minute,” you say, “that can't be right. Adrian Martinez of Shadow Ridge and Tucker Stokes of Coronado finished third and fourth in the boy's race and Leah Ballard of Clark was 10th in the girl's race, even though the North placed first through 9th. Besides, it's not Northern and Southern Conference, it's Northern and Southern Region.”

 

 Oh, right, you got me! But the article was correctly quoted. The only difference was the fact that piece from the Review Journal, written by John Henderson, was dated September 1, 1985, and the event being discussed was the 1984 state meet, held that year at Sunset Park here in Las Vegas. But like a time warp it might as well have been written last week. More teams--only four teams competed in 1984 top division races--and a whole new cast of characters (well, almost, as we shall see) but eerily similar results.

 

 In the year 2005 in the Northern 4A boy's race, Joe Parker of Reno and Dan Geib of Galena went one-two and the North placed seven in the top ten, despite the efforts of Adrian Martinez, Tucker Stokes, and Kasey Campbell of Basic who placed seventh. In the girls race it was just as ugly as it was back in ‘84. Northern 4A teams South Tahoe, Reno, and Carson copped the first three spots and the Northern girls went one through nine before Leah Ballard crossed the line.

 

 The results this year weren't any better for the South in the lower division races either. The Northern teams in 3A went 1-3 in both the boys’ and girls’ races and the first Southern finisher in the boy's race was 16th. Ouch! In the 3A girl's race the first three finishers were from the North, along with seven of the top ten. In 2A Scott Eubanks of Laughlin (you can't get much further south than that) won the race. Great! But 12 of the next 13 were from the North. In girls 2A the South's outstanding female runner, Wendy Harris of Lund, won the race as expected, but after that only one of the next ten runners was from the South. Yet as much as we love Wendy Harris down here, to call Lund South is about as ludicrous as putting Round Mountain in the Southern Region for track. Oh, that's right! They are.

 

 OK, so, “Houston, we have a problem.” Let's go back to the article from 20 years ago and see what the conclusions were then.

 

 The article cites two main reasons for the disparity between North and South. To quote: “It's too darn hot” [referring to Southern Nevada, of course]. All right, granted. I won't go into the details. We all know that argument. And it is a valid point. Things haven't changed, global warming notwithstanding. The heat in Southern Nevada from July through October makes it tough to train. But here's the second quote from the article:

 

“Another big reason is when the Clark Country School District dropped junior high sports, it forced high school coaches to recruit from physical education classes. Meanwhile, Northern Conference coaches are sending their runners out with track clubs in the off-season.”

 

Not much change there in twenty years. There was a footnote on one of the messages posted on the NTS Message Board this week that caught my eye. It was in response to a starter piece by Coach Wilvers of South Tahoe discussing the state meet. The poster announced that the Middle School X-Country Invitational would be held September 29, 2006, at Kahle Park in South Lake Tahoe.

 

 That said it all.

 

 When was the last time there was a middle school cross country event of any kind in the Las Vegas valley? Yes, I know that the private middle schools do hold an informal event each year in October at Jaycee Park, where kids from the Catholic schools and the Las Vegas Day School run grade-level races that cover, what, a mile? But that's it! No middle school sports in CCSD, except a limited basketball program that was initiated a few years back. Wow! I'm sure that program does wonders for recruiting kids to run cross country in high school. So meanwhile those middle-school kids are playing Pop Warner football, Little League baseball, Youth and Club soccer, softball, volleyball, swimming, gymnastics, hockey, lacrosse, golf, you name it.

 

 Twenty years ago there was the Lizards running club here in Las Vegas, coached by Tony Kyriacou. At least Tony is still around, now as the head cross country coach at Vo Tech, but the lizards are back hiding under rocks in the desert. The Red Rock Racers were at least on the horizon in 1984, and a number of the best local high school runners ran races with the Las Vegas Track Club back then. But now in 2005 there are no youth running programs devoted to distance running year ‘round in the Las Vegas valley. With no disrespect intended to USATF Nevada, yes, I am aware that there are a number of youth running clubs registered in Southern Nevada. But they are all pretty low-key and certainly don't have a big impact on high school cross country as the clubs do up North. And runners in the 15-19 age group at LVTC low-keys runs on any given Saturday from December through August are scarcer than vegetarians at a cannibal barbecue, except for those Vo Tech runners that Tony turns out or when Lori Petrik brings her kids up from Laughlin.

 

 Vo Tech’s girls finished third in the Sunrise Regional this fall and, in addition to Scott Eubanks finishing first at state, Laughlin’s girls won the 2A title. Coincidence? I think not.

 

 Meanwhile in the Reno area you have the Silver State Striders led by Coach Susong of Reno and whatever Coach Wilvers calls his group over there in the Tahoe area, for starters. For years, Penny Sparks had her Godspeed running group in the Carson City area, and although Penny has recently moved to California I suspect that Godspeed is still active. And do not think for a minute that Robbie Grant doesn't have those kids up in Winnemucca who run for her at Lowry (six straight state championships for the girls, starting in 2000) running year round! Or that Warren Mills over there in North Tahoe (with his 20-plus state team championships) ends his season in November and doesn't see his kids again until the following August.

 

 Pontificating aside, back to 1985. Here is a quote from one of the Southern coaches in that article:

 

“I’ve been in the state for 10 years and when I came and looked at the North and the South, at the time the South was dominating cross country.... That surprised me because the North had things going for it that the South didn’t.”

 

Well, coach, you were right. (I’ll disclose later who that coach was.) In addition to the weather and the altitude factors; the lack of middle school sports in the South; and the disparity in running club activity which accounts for more year-round running in the North, there are two other things that have come into play even more since 1985.

 

 There is lack of continuity within school programs, especially in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson, a constant switching of kids from one school to another because of rezoning as new high schools open. This tends to discourage kids from staying with a sport because of that lack of continuity with coaches and teammates. Two years ago, half of Centennial's freshmen cross country runners got rezoned to Shadow Ridge. To cite a more specific example, one of the best freshman girls in 2004 was Amanda Gilbert from Centennial. She got rezoned to Arbor View this year and decided not to run cross country but concentrate on soccer, club soccer in the fall and then school soccer in the winter. I know this happens in Reno too, which is why I suspect some schools like Sparks, Hug, Wooster, McQueen, and even Reed are not exactly flourishing in cross country. But it's not happening in places like Carson, South and North Tahoe, Incline, and Winnemucca, which may be why those programs are doing well. This switching also involves coaches. New schools open up and coaches take advantage of the fact. That was happening 20 years ago also, but it's accelerated since then.

 

 And speaking of coaches, that brings up the last major point I want to make. Twenty years ago there were not enough dedicated, well-qualified coaches coaching cross country. Here is how another article written in the Las Vegas Review Journal, also by John Henderson, dated September 26, 1985, and titled Las Vegas athletes running away from cross country addressed the problem:

 

“Why? A number of fingers are being pointed. Among the targets are lazy students, lack of budgets, outside jobs and especially the death of junior high sports. But the most fingers are pointed at a group of apathetic coaches. Some have vibrant programs. But many are wondering how, in a school of more than 2000 kids, other coaches can't get five boys or girls who want to run.”

 

The editorial--that's what it was, an editorial, as opposed to some innocuous article about the sport--next quoted Al McDaniels, who was then the cross country and track coach at UNLV:

 

“…there's not as much pressure put on high school programs to be successful as on football or basketball programs.... Some of them don't field full teams and no pressure is put on. They just hire somebody who's not really interested in it.”

 

Pretty strong stuff. And there were a few Letters to the Editor following that editorial from parents supporting their team's coaches. One letter tried to shoot the messenger, pointing out the poor coverage the paper provided when it came to covering cross country. (Does that sound familiar?)

 

 Henderson's article went on as follows:

 

“Administrators are plugging holes but a number of coaches have limited responsibilities. On eight of the 20 teams, the cross country coach is not the head track coach. That doesn't allow much continuity.”

 

What has changed since 1985 in CCSD? Not much. There are now more than double the number of teams and still not enough coaches (despite the high pay. Yeah, right!). And the percentage of cross country coaches who are also head track coaches is even lower! I cannot even get to eight when it comes to counting 4A cross country coaches who are also the schools head track coach: Jim Holben at Durango, Roger Hansen at Valley, Bill Miller at Centennial, John Dixon at Del Sol, Harold Vaughn and Jessica Scobell at Cimarron. I'm sure I’m overlooking a few, but it is still a small minority who coach year round--both cross country and track--and are head coaches for both sports.

 

 To be blunt, there just aren't enough strongly “dedicated-to-distance-running” coaches down here in the South. There are too many guys who only coach cross country and then only coach from August to November. And, of course, there is a paucity of women coaches. Women like Jessica Scobell from Cimarron, Secretary of the SNTCCA, are rare: young, involved, and a track/running “junkie.” Lori Petrik at Laughlin is another exception. She's a go-getter and she runs herself. Natalie Thomas, the Foothill girl's coach, is another “star.” She and Coach Scobell were just voted by their fellow coaches as the 4A girls’ Coaches of the Year in Southern Nevada. Unfortunately, few women coaches stay with the sport for long. Bonanza, for example, lost both their coaches this year when Kacie Hoard and her husband Tyrone, who was the boy's coach at Bonanza and boy's Coach of the Year in Sunset in 2004, moved to the state of Washington. Bonanza's boys went to state last year as Sunset Champs. Not this year. Jessica Zarndt, who was an outstanding distance runner at first Cheyenne, then UNR and later UNLV, is no longer coaching at Bishop Gorman or helping out at Liberty now that she a full-time student in medical school here in Las Vegas. So it goes.

 

 Yes, there are some dedicated, relatively young, and new--to Las Vegas at least--male coaches who are willing to get involved with the coaches’ association, guys like Pat Fitzpatrick at Shadow Ridge, voted Sunset boy's Coach of the Year this year; Roger Hansen at Valley; Chris Hendley at Spring Valley; Scott Thrasher at Cheyenne; Robert Davis at Palo Verde; and Mark Fordney at Green Valley, just to name a few. But there aren't enough of them.

 

 Bottom line on coaches: too many schools, not enough year-round distance coaches. Coaches like Dan Wilvers, Warren Mills, Robbie Grant, Bruce Susong, and Domingo Tibaduiza at Galena do make a difference. Is it any coincidence that Boulder City didn't send a team to state this year? Again, I think not. Rich Welch, the 3A girls Coach of the Year in 2004 retired this past spring.

 

 And then there is Basic, sans Larry Burgess. The Basic Wolves did not send a team to state this year for the first time since 1982. This is not to disparage the new coaching staff at Basic. The program is alive and well (at least as long as there are still Campbell's running at Basic, I guess) and the enthusiasm is still there, but the Silver Fox left a big pair of paws to fill. Oh, and speaking of Coach Burgess, that was Larry who was quoted earlier when he said, “...the North had more things going for it that the South didn't.” Sadly, it has even more things going for it now that Coach Burgess has retired from coaching.

 

 That is another advantage that the North has. Coaches do not have to be school district employees in most school districts up North. For example, Coaches Susong and Martin, the Reno coaches, are not school district employees, nor are coaches Dan Wilvers at South Tahoe or Robbie Grant at Lowry.

 

 In CCSD, all coaches must be certified teachers or classified employees. The hiring rules are different from North to South, at least in the public schools, and it favors the North big time when it comes to hiring and retaining coaches. Bruce Susong up in Reno is as old as Methuselah. He's allowed to coach in the Washoe County School District despite being, by his own admission, “retired.” Would Larry Burgess still be coaching cross country at Basic if CCSD policy permitted retired teachers to continue coaching? I suspect he would.

 

 Finally, one problem that confronts the girls who run high school cross country is not limited to Southern Nevada, but this year it seemed to hit especially hard in the South. It's a sad fact that a majority of female runners do not improve their times, or even hold their own in many cases, from their sophomore to senior year. Many don't run at all as seniors, or if they do they don't do well. This year in 4A, for example, the top southern finisher who was a senior (Sierra Johnson of Las Vegas) finished 36^th (70 finishers). Only five seniors placed in the top 35, and all of them were from the North: Alyssa Abbott (Galena), Megan Hillyard (South Tahoe), Rachel Hadley (Reed), Chelsea Holt (Reno), and Lindsey Kinsinger (Galena).

 

 Penny Sparks has explained it well in several published articles. As young girls go through puberty their bodies change, often drastically. They frequently shift weight, and they are no longer the “perfect running machine” that they were as prepubescent females. Lots of these young women adjust and go on to become even better athletes later as they go to college and beyond. But it's a difficult adjustment for many and the results reflect that. How many of our girls make it to state as freshman and sophomores and then go down hill after that? Most of them! We know why and it is no one's fault, but that doesn't make it conducive for those girls to stay with cross country so many get discouraged and walk away. And when those older girls don't continue with the sport the team suffers by not having the benefits of their experience, maturity, and leadership.

 

 The situation is generally reversed with the boys. As guys mature they become faster, stronger (14 of the top 15 finishers in the boy's 4A race this year were juniors or seniors; the top three were all seniors). Those juniors and seniors do provide that experience, maturity, and leadership to their teams.

 

 There you have it.  So what does the future hold? Not much has changed in 20 years when it comes to finding excuses and rationalizations for why the North seems to dominate in cross country in the Silver State.  First, it is always going to be tougher to train as a distance runner in Southern Nevada than it is in the North, especially in the critical months of June through September. Second, middle school sports are not likely to return to CCSD. Finally, the edge that the North has with regard to youth running clubs could be neutralized, but it will likely always be difficult to recruit and retain good distance coaches in Clark County schools as long as the playing field for hiring coaches is not level.

 

This is not to say the North will always dominate. Exceptional coaches come and go. Coach Burgess won five state championships and eleven Zone/Regional championships with his boys’ teams at Basic, all of them from 1987 to 1998. Bruce Momsen, the head boy's coach at Boulder City, won four 3A championships from 1988 to 2000. John Dixon won two girl's state championships as the head coach at Cheyenne in 1996 and 1997. And the North certainly did not have a monopoly on outstanding runners from 1984 to the present, nor are they likely to in the future. For the past two years, Reno's Joe Parker and Mel Lawrence have ruled supreme, but no one dominated the stage, at least in 4A, like Green Valley's Abby Miller who won state four times from 1996 to 1999. Basic's Pat Hubbard and Bonanza's Cory Jeffers were double state individual champions in 1987 and 1988 and 1998 and 1999, respectively. To use an old war cry: “The South will rise again.”

 

 But don't hold your breath waiting, at least not until Mel Lawrence graduates and those California boarder raiders--North and South Tahoe--are kicked out of the NIAA and forced to complete in the California State Meet. No, I'm just kidding. Coach Wilvers and Coach Mills: I love you guys, even if the Lakers did steal that state championship from us in 1999. But that's another story.

 

 (Coach Phil Lawton)