It is not enough to say that our Boys Cross Country team has a tradition of excellence. To simply list their many awards and accomplishments would be to do them an injustice; however, as an overview, and because we have to start somewhere: they’ve made it to state in the last four consecutive years, participated in nationals in the last three, and, while at Nike Team Nationals, placed in the open race second—behind the team from Kenya. And that was all from the last few years I’ve gone to school here, never mind previous seasons.
But these achievements aren’t all that surprising when taken in context of the training, sheer amount of miles and sprints and conditioning they do. To begin, the team never stops training—except for the two two-week intervals of rest they get after the cross country and track seasons. And because CIF rules prohibit cross country coaches to meet with their teams on Sundays and between the end of school and the beginning of the summer program, the responsibility to organize practices during these times falls to the team captains: seniors Bryant Chan, Yufei Fu, Charlie Johansen, Christos McClain, and Nick Shar. But once the summer program started, the team’s schedule started to look a little like this: Monday, six miles in the morning and eight in the afternoon; Tuesday, six in the morning and six speed-conditioning miles in the afternoon; Wednesday, 18 miles in total; this pattern repeated itself through the week and into Saturday and Sunday. “The summer training we just completed was second to none before in terms of both volume and intensity,” said Coach O’Brien. “Many of our athletes ran between 900 and 1000 miles during the 13 week summer vacation period alone.”
All this they do so that when the time comes they can rock their opponents.
And when there’s nobody else to race, the Apaches race against themselves: while the rest of the city slept on Sept. 7, 2009, the Arcadia Boys Cross Country team held their annual Labor Day 5K. There were three teams, each consisting of the alumni of the three feeder middle schools: Dana, Foothills, and First Avenue. The event began Labor Day morning and drew to a close with the disclosing of the results of the race (apparently Dana is faster than both First Ave. and Foothills) and an annual tradition, the announcement of the year’s Varsity 14. It was hot. They were caked in mud and sweat, but the fourteen of them pulled on their varsity sweatshirts, proud nonetheless.
On Sept. 12, the team traveled to their first race, the Laguna Hills Invite. Though not a league meet, it nonetheless served the important purpose of setting the mood for the beginning of the year. And because it was an invite, the team raced by grade, as opposed to the usual varsity, junior varsity, and soph-frosh categories. Though frosh placed 3rd and seniors, 2nd, the rest of the two grade levels dominated and swept 1st place, which is great by all accounts, considering most teams have only a handful of talented runners, scattered through the grades, they like to stuff into varsity. “The results were really a testament to how solid our team is this year. Go through the results and you’ll see that we’re strong on every level,” boasted senior Gabriel Weil. And he may have been onto something, especially since the only other team to come close to Arcadia in terms of depth was El Toro, whose seniors came in 3rd, juniors, 4th, sophomores, 3rd, and freshman, 8th.
But the Laguna Hills Invite wasn’t important just because it set the tone for victory early in the season—it also acted as a gauge of sorts, a monitor and indicator of progress. For some on the team, especially the freshmen, improvement was more dramatic: according to senior Patrick Wrobel, “there’s this kid, Mitchell Pratt—we call him Fogle—he got 5th in the frosh race, and it’s crazy ‘cause he’s so skinny, like just a skeletal system propelled by pure mechanical motion. He’s definitely a prospect.” However, Fogle was not the only freshman prospect—to be a freshman on Arcadia’s cross country is to be a prospect. “This is my fourth year running, and I wasn’t anywhere nearly as dedicated as these incoming kids are now…they have the ability to quickly adapt, and these incoming 9th and 10th graders will take this team to places it hasn’t been able to reach before,” agreed  Patrick.
Unfortunately, on Sept. 19 in the Woodbridge Invitational, Arcadia’s varsity team came in third to previous state champion Royal High School and St. John Bosco. Though the meet’s results have no bearing on the team’s future, it was an injury nonetheless. But according to sophomore Juan De La Rosa, “In a way I’m glad we lost Woodbridge, because it was an eye-opener.”
    And with that smarting lesson the Apaches doubled their efforts and swept League Meet #1, crushing the 7 other schools in attendance. At the junior varsity level, opponents had virtually no hope, with Arcadia seizing the first 6 spots and 9 out of the first 12. The varsity team placed 4 runners in the top 5, which was impressive, again considering that there were 7 other schools in attendance. However, even then the full brunt of Apache force was held back, as two varsity members were pulled out of the race to rest up for the following weekend’s infinitely more important—and competitive—Stanford Invitational.
But it is still early, and as Woodbridge evinced, Arcadia is not above mistake or flaw. It’s only been a month into the season, and State Championships won’t be till winter break. And so for that reason, I say the following proudly but with caution: Arcadia is ranked first in state and second nationally. As Coach O’Brien put it, “WHO KNEW!!??” That said, the Apache Boys Cross Country still have a long road ahead, months of training, and people should not get ahead of themselves. After all, ranks have meaning only if we deliver come race time.

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