Wednesday, August 27, 2008

It's not 'just' a cross country championship

Last November, a small group of athletes was awarded a banner and a trophy for winning a state championship. The banner didn't read "Yeah, but that was only cross country." The trophy had no inscription on it such as "So Academy and Los Alamos didn't have their best that day."

The banner simply reads "state champions."

No matter what happens in this season or in any other, the Belen High School girls cross country team ran an outstanding race that day in Rio Rancho, and no one can ever take that away from the Lady Eagles. More importantly, no one can diminish the significance of their accomplishment because of the nature of their sport, their classification's situation that particular year or how tough the field was in 2007.

I wouldn't be writing this column to defend the significance of the trophy if I hadn't heard snickering here and there. High school students can be mean when it comes to bashing sports accomplishments, sometimes out of jealousy. I've heard more than a few wisecracks about the Lady Eagles' unexpected win in the past year, not all of which were made at any one school.

The facts about cross country's place in the scholastic sports world are simple. Courses are spread out. Meets are typically held Saturday mornings, often far from a campus, and the teams are small and don't practice in a contained area. The sport doesn't carry the visibility that basketball, baseball and football have, and that makes it hard for most students to appreciate the art of running.

It would be nice if there was a way for cross country runners to gain the spotlight of a home-run hitter, a great 3-point shooter, or a wide receiver streaking down the sideline. It's difficult for spectators to enjoy the art the way they're used to watching sports, though Belen's program has more support than most. It was refreshing to see parents, faculty and even the BHS cheerleading squad at last year's Adron Gardner Classic.

Still, the Lady Eagles don't get the respect they deserve. The relative obscurity of their sport aside, their accomplishment was made more grand considering they had no juniors or seniors on the team.

I heard a few journalists say it wasn't Los Alamos' best year, and Albuquerque Academy didn't have one of its best runners. That shouldn't matter. Academy knew who the Lady Eagles were, having been their District 5-4A partners for three seasons, and Los Alamos has won 14 state team titles in the 28-year history of the girls state championships. Belen outran both of them, leaving excuses by the side of the Sandoval County course.

Belen had all five placing runners finish within the top 17. Aleona Reyes, who was fourth overall, was followed by Laycee Smith, Tayler Hendren (an eighth-grader at the time), Shaylene Chavez and Cheyanne Boggus. Even Tessa Hendren was 39th, and even though Academy's fifth runner was 15th, the Eagles were just far enough ahead among the top four finishers to win.

Belen has an excellent chance to do extremely well again, with all five state scorers returning and still no experienced seniors on the squad. Some might say the Eagles "snuck up" on Los Alamos and Academy last season and weren't taken seriously; that probably won't happen this year.

That's OK. If Belen can repeat as champions, hopefully there will be no grumbling about "off years" or "being lucky."

The Eagles can truly put to rest most of the muttering with another state championship, something more doable and conceivable this season. Last year, while the Eagles had finished fifth at state the year prior, they didn't even beat Academy at district, so it's easy to see why tough teams might have overlooked Belen.

That doesn't change the fact the 2007 Eagles brought home the first cross country championship in school history.

The trophy is theirs, and if other 4A teams want to claim the 2008 state title, they'll probably have to knock off an Eagle team that already knows what its potential is.

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