The sun peaks over a wall of trees in the east, drying the slick grass near the starting line at Evergreen Park in Effingham, Ill. Most of the teams sit on the tennis courts; duffel bags and track suits thrown aside as the runners prepare for the three-mile race ahead of them.
Teeth chatter and breath is visible in the frigid mid-October chill. Friends and family line the sidewalk trying desperately to catch a sunbeam at the risk of impaired vision.
It’s the last race of the season — the St. Anthony Invitational. After all of the training and pushing each other to the brink of exhaustion every week, it’s finally over.
But for the Charleston boys’ team, it’s just getting started, but it’s hard for the team to focus on the race ahead or the third place finish they’ll assume, for the Trojans are only a week away from the meet they’ve been looking forward to all season.
This is what they live for. This is what it’s all about. In one week, the boys will make the drive to Mt. Vernon to compete in the regional tournament.
Under head coach Derrick Landrus, the Trojans are hoping to place in their ninth straight regional tournament in 10 years.
“This is the one we want to peak at,” Landrus said. He said the team has used every race this season as practice for regionals, but also said the team won’t be pushing themselves nearly as hard as they have for previous meets.
“We’re not working them as hard as we have the past week or two,” Landrus said. “We want to get them a little freshened up.”
In preparations for regionals, the team has practiced what they call “tapering.”
“We build up for a peak for conference, what our coach considers probably the most important race of the year,” senior Matt McElwee said. “Then afterwards, we kind of stay away from the really hard workouts to taper off for regionals and sectionals.”
Although the Trojans are a fairly young team with only two seniors, five juniors, two sophomores and four freshmen, Landrus said the pressure of placing in regionals to advance to sectionals and then on to state hasn’t affected the team.
“We’re in a different regional than we’ve ever been in,” junior Aaron Smith said.
Charleston will be facing eight schools in regionals: Carbondale, Effingham, Mattoon, Marion, Salem, Mt. Vernon and Centralia.
“We haven’t run against Centralia,” Smith said. “We haven’t run against Mt. Vernon. Effingham and Mattoon, we know we can beat. With Salem, we have a grudge race.”
At the Apollo Conference meet on Oct. 14 at Olney, the Wildcats edged the Trojans by 12 points, taking first place. Smith finished second in the race with a time of 17:00, beating Salem junior Cory Nix, who clocked in at 17:25. However, low placement by Charleston runners held the team back, allowing Salem to steal the victory.
Despite the lack of experience in a new regional, the team will run on as if nothing was different. To them, it’s just another race.
For McElwee, it could also be the last race he ever runs in crimson and gold.
He’s come a long way since his first race as a freshman, clocking in at 28:46. McElwee has been a staple to the team the entire season. As one of the top two runners for the Trojans, he’s helped lead the Trojans to multiple first-place finishes. McElwee averaged 16:55 for the season second only to Smith, who averaged 16:36.
Smith has run cross country since he was a freshman, working himself up to become the Trojans’ top runner. He got his start in jr. high track, where despite his plans to run the 100m, he instead ran the mile, which he “blew away.”
“Ever since, that’s just really what I’ve been into,” Smith said.
It’s no wonder Landrus considers them his best runners.
The two push each other harder each race, challenging each other. They consider it a form of friendly competition that helps them stay motivated and do better every week.
“When I was doing summer running, they told me it’s always good to get that guy you can run with and who can push you,” McElwee said. “He and I, you know, friendly jokes, messing around, and in the race, if one of us is having a bad day, the other one will push him up or pull him back up there.”
It’s a good thing to have a teammate in any sport to help out, especially with cross country. The mental toughness, Smith said, is the single hardest aspect to the sport. The ablility to push one’s self to the brink of exhaustion takes a huge amount of will-power. A runner can also have second thoughts about keeping pace with other runners.
“When you get passed by somebody early in the race, it takes a lot not to try to go with them,” Smith said. “When someone passes me early, I want to go with him. I don’t want to let him outrun me. I’ve got to have that mental thought process to think, ‘Are they going to maintain this? Do I have to go with them, or do I let them go and reel them in later?’”
McElwee and Smith are there for each other, even though their running styles are different.
“(McElwee) starts out with a slower speed,” Smith said. “He runs a race that’s going to psyche you out. I run like a mile; I go out strong, try to break people early, then come back and hopefully have a kick at the end.”
Landrus encourages the friendly rivalry, which transcends cross country into other sports. Both runners will participate in track, gunning for a two mile record set at 9:31.94 by Eric Werden in 2003.
“Matt either wants to get up with Aaron or beat him,” Landrus said. “That’s good. Aaron’s a darn good runner.”
In only the third meet of the season, however, the Trojans suffered a huge blow.
The Springfield Lanphier Tour was a miserable race for the Trojans, who finished 8th at the capital city Matterhorn. Rain turned the hills of Lincoln Park into a muddy, slippery mess. The extreme humidity made it hard for the team — and spectators — to even breathe. One would break a sweat just standing around.
“The conditions were awful,” McElwee said. “Everybody was hurting. It was probably the roughest race this year.”
It was in these adverse conditions the team lost McElwee and Smith. McElwee, upon finishing the race, began complaining that his leg was hurting. As it turns out, he had pulled a hamstring and would be forced to sit out the next two meets. Smith, on the other hand, injured his hip and was forced to miss most of the season.
He attributed the injury to a period of time last year when he didn’t take a break between track and cross country. The state track meet, he said, was on a Saturday. Practice for cross country began the following Monday.
Without his top two runners, Landrus feared the performance of the team would drop.
“I knew we weren’t going to do as well, so our goal was to get them healthy,” Landrus said. “I think we’re close to 100 percent now.”
Most teams look to a leading athlete to motivate them. Not so for the Trojans. McElwee said even without himself and Smith leading the team, they stay motivated, pushing themselves further. The Trojans proved it when they won the next race against Newton, Teutopolis and Paris.
“It’s about that time that you start wondering how your team is going to end up doing in more important races like regional and sectional,” McElwee said.
“I was happy as could be when I found out the guys came to step it up when Matt and I couldn’t,” Smith said.
Smith gushed for his teammates as he prepared for regionals, calling them “the most athletic group in the community, but the least coordinated,” as the team awkwardly played basketball in Baker Gym at Charleston High School, then resorted to throwing a tennis ball at the walls.
Across I-57 is Charleston’s arch-rival Mattoon. In regards to most sports, the schools have a rivalry comparable to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox or — being more geographically correct — the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs.
In the Green Wave’s first invitational since 1993, the Trojans, led by a revitalized McElwee, ran away with first place. McElwee finished seventh overall clocking in at 17:36.25.
“All in all, I’ll take it for a comeback race,” McElwee said immediately following the race.
Landrus cites the Mattoon Invite as the one of the most rewarding races of the season. Not only was McElwee leading the team once again, but in previous weeks, the team had proven they could carry their own. With McElwee back in his usual spot, this compounded into a first place finish.
“We’ve been pretty consistent, all of us,” Landrus said. “The freshman have been pretty consistent, which is sometimes a problem for us.”
Now, with McElwee’s hamstring healed and Smith’s hip nearing 100 percent, the team looks ahead to its challenge in Mt. Vernon, and even to next season. McElwee will be gone, spending his first year of college 45 minutes north at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and another runner will fill his spot as Smith continues to lead the team.
