Battle Cry

Call me sappy, but I couldn’t help but wax nostalgic as I watched the NCAA Division 2 Regional Cross Country Championship at Franklin Park this afternoon.

It’s hard to believe it was almost six years ago to the day that I was chasing this animal out of the wilderness and up the last hill before launching into a final flurry around the field — a too little, too late move that forced me to settle for second place in a race that, regardless of my own individual result, still ranks as the most exciting I’ve ever had the privilege of running.

That cold, blustery November afternoon back in 2003 will be forever remembered as the turning point for Stonehill Men’s Cross Country, a program that is now considered one of the best in the land — as far as Division 2 academic institutions go, anyway. For the first time in school history the men’s team qualified for the national championship, finally joining the women’s squad, who by this point had made an old habit of punching their ticket to the big dance.

We were not a squad loaded with superstars, but rather a bunch of rag-tag, wanna-be 4:30-something milers out of high school who, on paper, had no business even thinking about running at a national championship. In 2000, we finished next to last at the New England Cross Country Championships — barely beating out Fitchburg State for the honor of collegiate cellar dwellars — and finished sixth at the regional meet. A national championship berth? I’m not sure we could have won the High School State Coaches Invitational. Three years later, however, we were the fourth best cross country team in all of New England, runner up in the region and the 12th best Division 2 squad in the country. As I sit here and look over the words I just typed, I can’t help but crack a smile.

That smile has less to do with what we accomplished that season, but more to do with the group of guys who accomplished it. To this day I have yet to come across a band of overachieving idiots with the unselfish mentality we maintained that entire season. Mike Tyson’s cornerman used to wear a jacket that had the following slogan embroidered on the back: All For 1 For All. That was Stonehill Cross Country in a nutshell.

Six years ago I wasn’t running down Nate Jenkins with the aim of winning an individual title; I was trying to stop the hairy guy in the UMass Lowell singlet from taking points away from my team. And the six guys behind me with STONEHILL emblazoned across their chests all fought with the same mindset: All For 1 For All. It was a two-team war from start to the finish. In the end, we just fell a few points short.

But we battled all the way to the end. Everyone, to a man, PR’d that day. For 6.2 miles we fought tooth and spike for the guy in front of us and the guy behind us in an effort to earn the privilege of punching a plane ticket to nationals in Raleigh. When we arrived in the Tar Heel state two weeks later, we showed our mettle by beating the boys in blue and posting a 12th-place team finish that still ranks as second best in school history.

Today’s Skyhawk squad replicated our regional finish from 2003 with a second-place showing to those raskly Riverhawks from UMass-Lowell. The similarities, however, end there. In this year’s battle of the birds, the guys in the purple came out with guns a blazin’ through 2 miles, but suffered an ambush from the blue backs somewhere around the 4-mile mark. They never recovered. They never fought back.

As a retired general of this army, it was tough to watch this current crop of soldiers from Stonehill — seven studs with the talent of a top-10 team in the country — lay down on the field of battle. Sorry fellas, but that’s not how you fight. Luckily for you guys, the war isn’t over yet.

I’ll leave you boys with the following advice. Over the next two weeks pick yourselves up and dust yourselves off, and when that gun goes off in Evansville, Indiana on November 21, fight for your life and the lives of those going into battle with you. Fight for the name on the front of your singlet. And when you feel like throwing up the white flag, think of the guy in purple behind you who’s trying to catch the blue shirt in front of you and keep fighting.

All For 1 For All.