The Joy of Winning, the Pain of Losing
by
Mark Jimenez
It's been a strange 18 months. The Fall of 2021 was filled with hope for the Shadow Ridge Womens Cross Country Team. The ladies were racking up win after win, and doing it in convincing style. We had a solid team with 4 seniors in the starting 7 (5 originally, but 1 went down to injury). We didn’t have anybody that was way out front, but what we had was a pack that would come in together in the top 10. It was an amazing season.
The girls won every race in Nevada, with the exception of one. Unfortunately, that one was the state meet, where we placed 2nd. That one race still haunts me as a coach.
The 2021 Shadow Ridge Womens team with the State Runner-Up Trophy
In Nevada, the state championship race alternates between Reno and Las Vegas every year. It’s in Las Vegas in even years, and it’s in Reno in odd years. Unfortunately these ladies didn’t get a chance to compete for the title in Las Vegas due to Covid. The season was canceled. So they had to compete in Reno. We knew we’d have some tough competition from the schools up there. They always run good, and they were running on a course they were very familiar with.
Still, we felt confident. We knew that if we ran our best that we could come away with the win.
Getting to Reno in and of itself is a bit of a nightmare. The school district charters a bus, and all athletes and coaches must take the bus. It’s an 8+ hour bus ride to Reno, stopping in Tonopah for food. There are lots of stories out there about teams being stuck when the bus breaks down. Then, when you finally get to Reno, you stay at the Circus Circus. This all happens one day before the race. It’s hardly ideal running conditions to be sitting on a bus for most of the day just one day before the race. But it is what it is, teams from the South do it every other year, and teams from the North do it every other year.
Race day came and it was windy, rainy, and cold. The girls had never raced in those conditions before. Still, the gun went off and the race started. The ladies started out well, this race had a split point about 1.5 miles into it, and I’ll never forget the announcer saying “Shadow Ridge is in first place at the halfway point.”
And then we weren’t. Things just didn’t go our way in the 2nd half of the race, and Galena came away with the win.
As a coach, I have spent many long hours wondering what I could have done better to prepare those ladies for the race. Did I over train them? Were they under trained? Should we have done a longer or shorter warm up? Did I say something to throw them off?
The 2021 Womens Team with the Southern Region Champion Plaque
For a year now I’ve felt like I let my team down in one way or another. I’ve examined the race from lots of different angles, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I let the ladies down.
Coach Flynn (Shadow Ridge’s main XC coach) and I have a goal of winning state championships. That’s our goal every year, but we didn’t get there last year. We felt that it was our best chance since we've been coaching together, but we didn’t quite make it. So I also feel like I let Coach Flynn down.
The season ended in November of 2021. Since then I retired from teaching and have focused on operating Red Rock Running Company. I did stay on to help coach Cross Country, though, and in June of this year another season started with summer intramural practice.
I spent a bit of time evaluating the prior seasons, and one thing that always bothered me is that injuries seem to plague cross country runners. These kids put in a lot of miles during hot conditions, and their bodies seem to break down over the months of the season. This season we focused on shorter runs with higher intensity. We also took a long approach. We didn’t care how fast they were in August, we cared how fast they were running the last week in October and the first week in November for the regional and the state meet.
Start of the 2022 5A Womens State Championship Race
We had a solid season on the mens and womens side. We brought home a lot of trophies. A few of our women runners were some of the fastest in Southern Nevada. Our mens team was strong, but whenever Faith Lutheran showed up we never seemed to finish higher than 2nd.
Before I go on, I would like to say that one of the most amazing things about cross country is that these kids never seem to root against each other. They are out there running in the summer heat and it brings a sense of camaraderie. They usually high five and chat after the race. Many of them train together in the off season or on club teams. They see each other during cross country and track season. It’s competition in the best way.
Faith Lutheran had an amazing team this year. One of the best Southern Nevada had seen in a long time. Those were the hushed comments among coaches as the season went on. It wasn’t if Faith was going to win state, it was by how much they were going to win state. They had runners posting really good times all season, and they were a lot of fun to watch.
First time up the hill
Then something happened. We beat them at the Coach’s Invitational. My first thought was that maybe they weren’t running their whole team, but they were. That was the only meet that Coach Flynn missed all year, and being the superstitious Irishman that he is, I told him that if he wanted us to win state he’d have to miss the state meet. I almost had him.
After the Coach’s Invitational there were two weeks off before the Regional race. Faith again asserted their dominance in that race, winning the region and beating us by 14 points. We did have some hope, though, because we had to run an alternate in that race due to one of our runners being sick.
Race day came. As a fan of running and the owner of the local running store, it was like Christmas for me. There were 8 races, 4 men and 4 women races, across divisions 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A. Being division 5A, Shadow Ridge was in the 2nd have of the races. I came early and watched all the races. Together with our friends from Reno Running Company, we have out plaques to all the individual winners of the races, each of them being individual state champions. It was so much fun watching the kids run, and there was great running throughout all the divisions.
Second time up the hill
As the clock ticked towards 11:30am, when the mens 5A race started, I kept expecting myself to get nervous. Last year I was incredibly nervous before the race started. But this year I had a strange sense of calm. Our kids knew what they had to do in order to win. We had a plan. The only question was if we could execute it or not.
We had looked at the times from some of the teams from up North. We figured that if we could beat Faith Lutheran, then we could win the state title.
The gun went off and the kids took off. The way the course is structured we see them 5 times. As we saw them the first couple of times (both within the first mile), I said to Coach Flynn, “based on where they are now, we aren’t going to win this thing.”
But, I also commented on how there is a lot of running left. This course has a major hill, and we wouldn’t see them again until they are almost done with the hill. And I know our kids love hills, we practice them a lot. As the kids started to come up the hill we saw the first pack, with Logan Scott of Faith Lutheran in the lead and two boys run Reno on his tail. Then there was a bit of a gap, followed by a chase pack, and then the main group.
More runners coming up the hill
Our team wears pink jerseys, they are very easy to spot. We started counting our runners and comparing them to other runners.
“If Ethan can stay in front of that pack, I think we can win this thing,” I said to Flynn as we ran to where we see the runners for the 4th time.
The runners started coming down the hill. The whole world was yelling. As coaches, we think that what we say to our runners makes a big difference during the race. In essence, what we yell at them as they go by boils down to “Run faster,” or, “you’re almost there.” But we yelled our hearts out as our team went by. Then it was a mad dash to the finish line to see the runners finish the race.
In the old days you wouldn’t know the results as runners crossed the line. You had to wait for them to be compiled and printed. Today we’re spoiled. Finished Results has an app that showed live scores as runners come through. So the whole crowd is cheering as the runners come in and looking at their phones at the same time. One shadow runner, two. Then a gap. Then Ethan coming third in a huge group.
Start of the 2022 5A Mens State Championship Race
We preach to these kids every day that every place counts in a race. Never ever get passed at the end, it’s a 2 point swing. One more for us, one less for them (in cross country low score wins).
So we’re all screaming at Ethan not to lose out. Stay in front!
Four Shadow runners, then five. We look down at the app. We were the first team with 5 runners across, so we populate with a perfect score, 15 (your score doesn’t count until you get 5 runners across). I knew it would change, it had to change, so I wasn’t concerned with it. Sure enough, it changed quickly as the 5th Faith Lutheran runner came across.
We were 6 points ahead. That’s close! The thing about the scores is they constantly change as runners finish the race. As each team gets 5 runners across the score will change, adding in the scores of all 5 runners of the team. 6 points is too close to call. During the next 45 to 60 seconds we watched as our lead dropped to 5 points then went up to 8 points.
“Eight points,” I said as time went on, “I think we did it.”
Then somebody, I think Coach Finch from Palo Verde, said, “Reno had a lot of runners up front and their 5th runner hasn’t come in yet.”
And me and my big mouth. I actually said, “At this point does it even really matter?” It was late in the race. I didn’t think the scores would change much.
And then Reno’s 5th runner crossed the line.
And then the scoreboard showed them 1 point behind us. One point is too close to call. Anything can happen. We started looking at the rest of the runners as they came across the finish line, trying to figure out if they already had 5 runners in.
Our lead held, and at the end the Shadow Ridge Mustangs had won their first Cross Country state title, by 1 point.
The women race went off at 12:40pm. I don’t envy the ladies. They had to run knowing that the boys had just won the championship. That’s got to be hard. And while they ran a great race, at the end of the day the teams from up north were just too good. They went 1-2-3, and a team from down south didn’t place until 4th as a team.
The future looks bright for Shadow Ridge Cross Country. We return a bunch of kids next year. This team was really young.
Hats off to the competition. I admire the heck out of those kids from Faith Lutheran. I suspect some of them ran the race with nagging injuries. I know that’s hard to do. And the kids from Reno ran an amazing race, they definitely saved their best for last.
We’ll see what next year brings. I’ll bet Coach Flynn will be wearing his same outfit at the state meet next year. Heck, he might not even wash his outfit until then…
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Every Run is a Good Run