Teamwork key for Aggie runners
Racing is a sport seen generally as individual rather than team-oriented. One person comes in first place and wins the race. One person finishes next and garners second place, and so on. There are no assists, nobody sets picks, nobody blocks for a teammate to make a hole in the defenders to run through, and nobody passes a ball to you. For the Aggie Cross Country team, however, there is much more of a team dynamic than meets the eye.
In team cross country racing, a team scores points according to the placement of their top five runners. If a runner comes in first they score one point. If a runner finishes tenth, they score ten points, and so on. The team with the lowest score wins. All five scoring runners must have a solid performance to win the race. Just like any team sport, a team usually can’t rely on one superstar to win the competition, while the other runners have mediocre performances. While there is usually a standout runner on a team, the other four runners play just as crucial, if not a more crucial, a role in the scoring. Utah State runners Aaron Clements and Kaylee Campbell know what it’s like to play both the role of the standout as well as the runner in the middle of the pack.
Clements, a sophomore from Taylorsville, Utah, spent half of his high school career chasing the pack and the other half leading the pack. After being the face of Taylorsville Cross Country for two years and serving an LDS church mission for two years, Clements returned and redshirted last year. This year, getting his first real taste of competitive collegiate cross country, Clements finds himself an integral part of the Aggie top five runners. Although it is a tough change, Clements doesn’t mind the new role so much.
“Going from the first to the third man on the team makes you feel a little bit smaller. It’s a little bit hard. It’s harder to have confidence in yourself at this level. It’s easy to doubt yourself, but it gives you something to shoot for next year. It was harder for me to push myself to get faster as the first person on the team,” Clements said.
Sophomore Kaylee Campbell shared similar sentiments. Campbell, who shone as a frontrunner for Preston High School during her high school career, felt the same competitive draw after making the jump to Division I collegiate running.
“It was definitely an adjustment, but it was a good adjustment. In high school it was like I hit a certain point where I didn’t have anybody to push or pull me, and it was difficult to get faster. (At Utah State) there’s always people you can run with, and that’s helped me get faster. There’s a lot to learn from the way the other girls run. We all come to the team with different experience.”
USU head coach Gregg Gensel said: “One of the things you give up when you run as a pack is frontrunner status. Many of our runners come from backgrounds of being star runners. When you come to the college level, the ability of those around you is the same or greater, and you get better because you have more athletes around you that are better quality. I’ve always felt like if you’re around people who are good, it makes you better, whether you’re the first guy or the fifth guy.”
Gensel, who coaches both the men’s and women’s teams, stressed the importance of running together as a pack during races as well as in practice.
“It’s part of the nature of our spot that you wouldn’t be a good athlete unless you were trying to be number one. There’s competitiveness. Wherever you end up, it helps the whole team get better when you try to get better.”
Clements said the coaches encourage the team to run together in races like they do in practice.
Runners benefit not only from the team support during a race of being pushed and pulled by their teammates. Generally teams who run as a pack score better as a team because all five scoring runners are working together to move up in the placings.
“We encourage (the athletes) to feed emotionally off the group. Sometimes it allows you to do things you didn’t think you were capable of doing. In practice, their workouts allow them to group, so they know they can run as a pack. Some teams can’t run as a pack, but our teams have been able to buy into that,” Gensel said.
The coaches also put emphasis on team unity.
“When we run together, it’s not like we’re running with other people, we’re running with friends,” Campbell said. “There’s not really any competition for the spotlight. It’s all about pulling for your teammates.”
Clements said, “It helps in training when you know everyone you’re running with. We stay pretty close with each other. In the summer we have a cross country camp where we all get to know each other and that helps us as a team.”
For the Aggies, this strategy has paid off. The women’s close-knit running helped them finish in second place at the WAC championships last weekend, edging defending champions New Mexico State. The tight running of the second, third, and fourth scoring runners , which included Campbell in 13th place, Jessie Chugg in 15th, and Alex Litzinger close behind in 16th, allowed Utah State to nudge ahead of their rival Aggies by a few crucial points.
It’s this pack mentality that both teams will be looking for this weekend as they gear up for the Regional meet hosted by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Clements said it’s harder to run as a pack in the bigger, national-level races due to the narrowness of courses and the hundreds of runners to navigate through.
“At pre-nationals we ran together at first, and then separated. We’re definitely working on that.”
The races at the regional meet will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 13 at Rose Park golf course, 1385 N. Redwood Rd. in Salt Lake City.
– mike.rees@aggimeial.usu.edu