Welcome Back

Today was the 2nd Annual Alumni Run. As part of this event last year, the new track was officially opened. With the track now being a year old (and full of bubbles), there was a greater focus on the alumni this year. We welcomed guys back from as far as the Class of 1979.

It was a fairly pleasant morning at least compared to the rest of the week. Things got started off with a prayer and blessing by DeSmet President, Fr. Sydney. After this, the alums were introduced to the current team and the alums to the seniors.

Then, former coach, Mr. Sothers, started the 3200m race. The race was Alumni dominated. Their top 5: Connor Callahan (’09, Marquette) who won the race for the second straight year running 9:55; Ethan Stack (’10, SLU) finish 2nd in 9:59; Zach Boyle (’10, Maryville) a Milk Table Hall of Famer; Rob Garwitz (‘05) the new coach, finished 5th; Jordan Mahood (‘07) a close 6th, one second behind Rob. This gave them a score of 17. The current runners had a score of 44. Abernathy finished 4th in 10:15, 40 seconds faster than last year. Next came Hussmann in 10:55 for 8th, followed by Matt OC in 11:01. Waller and Seiler rounded out the top 5. Coach Traughber (‘97) finished in 30th place.

The Callahan Brothers and The O'Connor Brothers

T-Bone and his runners & A runited Wolf-Pack

New this year was the 1600m meter race. Some the Alumni, mostly recent grads, chose this option, and raced against the newcomers and freshmen. Stack took the gold in 5:01. Yes, he did run in the mile race right after the 2 mile. Silver went to Jeff Harvath of the Class of 1998. Running his first mile race since last cross country season because he became a 400/800 specialist, Gibby (‘10) got the bronze in 5:16. Other notables were: the enforcer, Blake Bender (‘10), who was in full Race-Day Black; the dynamic duo of KD & Lang (‘08) finishing right behind each other; and Mike Jezewak who never on the team, but was a volleyball State Champ with Bender.

Gibby and the Enforcer

There was a BBQ afterwards for everyone to hangout and chat, a great chance to meet the former runners and hear the stories of the past. There were stat books that dated way back for everyone to check out and relive past seasons. I had the opportunity to go on a short cool down with a group of alums before this, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s just really cool realizing that we are a part of something greater.

Again, this was an awesome event and I’m already looking forward to next year’s when I’m going to be on the other side.

Quote of the Day: “And now Connor is about to lap his other brother on the far turn”- Coach Russo. There were three Callahans in this year’s race and that will increase in the coming years as the youngest Callahans were there watching.

Best Dressed: If you happened to walk by or for that matter be within eyesight of the DeSmet track Saturday morning you saw one of the most dedicated efforts for the best dressed award. Kevin Abernathy with the Barcelona salmon colored shirts, socks, shorts, AND matching headband. Won the attention of all the participants and the spectators of the DeSmet 2nd annual 2 mile race. This bold dress choice will set a tough standard that will be tough to match throughout the season.
-Best Dressed written by Boyle-

Plus Two

Another hot day for practice, but things were slightly different. Today, we got rewarded. Rewarded with a pool party. But to go to the party, one had to make it through practice first.

For most guys, this meant one of a couple different routes to Conway Park and then a couple tempo miles. We did the plus two tempo miles to get a little bit of speed work in before the highly anticipated Alumni Race this weekend. Everyone battled and took care of business on the tempos. I had Rob with me which made it way better.

After a stop at the picket we headed back to DeSmet. Rob, our new coach and 4 year member of the team in the early 2000s, gave Jacob and I a history lesson on some of the teams of the past. It is always cool to hear about the guys that have come before us in the program. There are so many stories, all of them unique. During the stretching, we realized it was Potter’s birthday, so we sang to him. Then, he got the water dump, fortunately for him there wasn’t much water left.


For the 2nd year in a row the team pool party was at Coach Boland’s house. And again it was a blast. Thank you very much for having us Coach. There was a bunch of stuff to do: basketball, washers, ladder golf, trampoline, and of course the pool. After defeating Matt OC in both ladder golf and washers, we teamed up to become team washers champions with our victory over Waller-Martini. During this time all sorts of craziness was happening in the pool. Splash bombs were going everywhere hitting anyone that they pleased. Patrick was being launched and did a flip. The grand finale was the races: Team Callahan (Michael, Patrick, Morris, and Sullivan) vs. Team Abernathy (Kevin, Matt, Potrzeboski, and LaBarge). It started with two freestyle relay races. With excellent performances from OC, Team Abernathy took both races. Next was the medley. Again Team Abernathy won as Potrzeboski beat out Sullivan on the final leg. Matt and I put our undefeated record on the line in one final race: 2v2 first half breaststroke second half freestyle. Patrick and I were dead even through the first leg. It came down to Michael and Matt. Mike took the lead on the breast, but Matt kicked him down in the free securing the victory by the slightest of margins.

This great day was capped off with another practice. This time it was a 1 or 2 mile run, weights, and core. The top guys saw the return of speed skating as the 2 miler was broken into two races. Again it was Abernathy and O’Connor on top, as each finished with a Gold and a Silver.

Quote of the Day: “Tell Coach Traughber that I said you could have the day off.”- Coach Vitello as we ran by on the warm-up.

Joke of the Day: “At least it wasn’t a jellyfish”- Matt O’Connor in response to someone saying they were stung by a bee. As most of us know, Matt was stung in the face by a jellyfish while vacationing in North Carolina.

Best Dressed: Matt OC. Having an all-around solid day will enhance anyone’s appearance. He was rocking the Jamers today. Yes, the half tights of swimming. After wearing them under his shorts during the first practice, he finally showed them off when it was race time in the pool.

New Season, New Routine

There a few things like the glorious first day of cross country season. As Coach Traughber and some others pointed out, one of those things is Christmas. And the day did not disappoint, as it was full of lots of presents.

The first being the all-new, completely revised practice routine. The biggest change being the revamping of the warm-up. To some people’s distress, the new routine still includes running. Sorry, but I don’t think there was much hope that that aspect of it was going to go the way-side like static stretching. The guys that came to the 2nd Camp this summer were familiar with it, and other guys caught on quickly. The warm-up is now either 3 or 4 laps, dynamic stretching, loosening skips, and sometimes drills (depends on the workout). All of the static stretching is now done after the run.

Now on to the big present: The Mile Time Trial. There was an impressive performance in the first heat by Patrick Callahan. All of his summer miles, paid off big time as he went tape-to-tape for the victory. Coming in after him was newcomer Potrzeboski and big-time summer runner Pribe. In the second heat, I, like Patrick, went tape-to-tape and finished in 4:45 two seconds better than last year. Next was the very impressive sophomore, Husmann who made a really big move and came in 4:57. Scherping was good in his XC debut finishing third.

Then came the business side of things. After I had the honored privilege to read the Program Philosophy, T-Bone introduced everyone and went over all the typical rules and lifestyle issues. Jack and I cooled down together. We tied in slug-bugs, but there is a long road ahead of that. As everyone knows, it was crazy hot. Because of this Jack decided to run through some sprinklers. What he didn’t know was that the sprinklers were in a lawn that is a finalist for some Creve Couer Beautiful lawn contest or something like that.

Quote of the Day: “It’s not hard to drink water”- Coach Traughber while talking about the importance of hydrating.

Best Dressed: Seiler. There just anything out there that can compete with Jacob’s Time Trial uniform. Mostly because it’s a legit uniform that’s totally awesome. On top of that, he ran well shaving 5 seconds off his time from last year. He had to other things going for him to help in earning this. The first is that no one has really seen him all summer because he’s been working, but that didn’t stop him from bringing his A game the first day back. The second is tradition, as he was the first winner last track season as well.

Time To Break Out The Spikes

As always, the end of week 2 of camp, meant it was time for the Cross Country Kickoff at Forest Park. De Smet had a great showing of guys that have trained all summer.

The guys were a little disappointed that they could not sign up as teams, because all week there was negations going on for who would be on what team. Not a probelem, though. The runners would just have to sign up by themselves.

After a warm up with Coach Garwitz and a run through of the new warm up, the guys were ready to break out the old Cross Country spikes again and head to the line.

It rained a lot Friday night, so the grass was tall and wet. It wouldn't have been a surprise if times were slow because of the conditions, but there were actually several PRs!

Jack Husmann led the way, setting a PR of 18:25. Close behind him were seniors Josh Goetz (PR) and the return of John Madey who ran a great race after more than a year off.

After those three came Brian Scherping. Brian ran a great time of 19:27 in his first 5k with De Smet. Brian learned some valuable lessons as he looks to bring his success in track to cross country. Dan Bowman returned from traveling all summer in time to race, and ran 22:55.

It is hard to get sophomores to come to morning practice every day in the summer. They can't drive, so they have to go out of their way to get a ride from an older runner or beg their parents. We had several this summer who did this, and their hard work already paid off in the first 5k of the season.

Mike Callahan, Justin Potter, Glen Mcgann, and Pat Callahan are just a few, and they all ran under 21:30, great times for not officially being in season yet.

It was good to see alumni Connor Callahan, who ran the race. Chris France and Andy McWhorter were there doing a long run around Forest Park.

As if a good Cross Country kickoff time isn't reason enough to wake up early every day and come run, the reward got even better when the guys from Forest Park met Kabes, Jimmy Reed, Mackenzie Smith, and the Russo family at the Traughber house for Pancake Breakfast! As always, Liz had pancakes, sausage, fruit, eggs, and all the chocolate milk we could drink prepared. It was all delicious, thanks for having us Coach Traughber and Liz.

Practice starts August 9. Keep running.

-Potterman

Steven's Point

Here is a recap of the first couple days of the Wisconsin running camp from Jack Husmann.

Sunday July 11-Tuesday July 13

Wisconsin

This week me, Justin Potter, the Callahans, Jimmy Reed, Collin Sullivan, Collin Vieth, Cleaver, and Seamus went to the Stevens Point Running Camp in Wisconsin with Coach Traughber and Coach Leeman. We all left DeSmet at 6 a.m. on Sunday (we would have left earlier but Justin decided to sleep in).

The camp started with a mile time trial and everyone from DeSmet ran great time showing that the summer training is paying off. The next morning we all woke up early and went on an easy run of about 4 miles with our groups. Then the Stevens Point cross country coach, Coach Witt, talked to everyone about summer training and after that we got ready for our afternoon workout. It was 20 minutes of tempos on the track. My group was going at 6:12 pace and everyone from DeSmet did great.

On Monday we also challenged the counselors to a game of wiffleball. It was everyone from DeSmet and a guy at the camp who we nicknamed Super Jimmy. It was a 5 inning game and very close. Cleavers pitching and some great defense is what kept us in the game. In the bottom of the fifth we were down by one run with two outs and Super Jimmy hit a walk off home run to win the game.

Quote/Joke of the day-"It doesn't matter guys because we've already lost". Collin Sullivan said this literally one second before Super Jimmy hit the home run that won the game.


Dream Mile

On Tuesday we did another short easy run in the morning followed by another afternoon workout. Todays workout was different than anything we had ever done before. It was called the Dream Mile. For the workout we took our mile pr and added around 20 seconds to it and tried to run a mile in that time. We could divide the mile however we wanted and would get 6 minutes of rest to split up . My group was aiming for a 4:32 mile. We ran a 200, 300, 400, 500, and another 200 at that pace with around a minute rest between each. It was a great way to finish the day, and my group ran exactly 4:32.

Quote of the Day- "If it was easy we would stand around and call it football". Coach Witt talking about cross country.

Joke of the Day- Coach Witt was showing a weird way that one of the girls on his team used to run and Michael whispered to us "Thats the Stack Shuffle".

A 5k of Angels and All-Stars

On Sunday morning I woke up early in my Huntington Beach Hotel to travel inland to Anaheim for the 2010 All-Star Game Charity 5k. I had setup my running schedule so that the race would be my tempos for the week. After hoping out of the car a couple blocks away for the Angel’s Stadium of Anaheim, I tracked down my number: 13 – Brendan Ryan. Being a MLB run event of course I had to associate my number with a player.

I took my place among the 7,000+ 5k runners in the 6 minute pace section of the start line. I was hoping to run right at or just under 6 minute pace for the race, but I wasn’t really sure how I would do. I was a tired from traveling and sightseeing, and still sore from the solo beach-side half-marathon that I ran two days before.

After words from former players and representatives of the charities the horn sounded and the race begun. I absolutely love the start of big races like this. I got to weave in and out of the masses. Splitting people and hitting gaps, so much fun. The course took us around on some streets around the stadium. I came through the first mile ahead of pace at 5:55. I continued to move up and pass the people that went out too hard. This actually sped me up as my second mile split was 5:53. The 3rd mile was the best. The field was thinning, but I was still passing people. We turned on to the parking lot and I knew it was too early for the finish, and to my surprise the course led right into the stadium. It was cool and I picked it up a bit and flew around the track as the grounds crew was working on the grass art. Coming around the dugout they had a camera and I saw myself on the video board as I finishing my loop. Made one more turn and finished up.

I finished in 18:17 which means my last mile was pretty fast, but I didn’t care. My tempo was good for 38th overall and 2nd best out-of-state finisher. I dropped over 60places and almost 2 minutes from my All-Star 5k time last year in St. Louis. I received my very nice medal and some free Nike socks.

But, I wasn’t finished I was doing a 5 mile tempo so I headed back to the start line and did an out-and-back on the first mile. A guy joked to his wife as I ran by, “This is his 3rd time through the course.” I flew by the rest of the walkers who gave me weird looks, only to be more surprised when they saw me running back at them. I heard multiple, “You’re going the wrong way!” and “Look at 13!” I enjoyed it.

Once again, I had lots of fun running out of St. Louis, and I’m glad I can share me experience with you guys. That’s one of the great things about what we do. It’s the same everywhere: St. Louis, Spain, California. It’s always one foot after the other.

Fresh Meat

Camp started Wednesday with an AE run to prepare the varsity hopefuls and incoming freshman for the first tempo run of the season on Thursday. I had an inside look at the football team getting big while I was on the elliptical.


After the run, the freshman, and returning runners were split into two teams for a team building activity. The object was simple, get the volleyball to the back, bring it to the front, and so on. The freshman teams were very evenly matched. The varsity hopefuls, not so much. The teams were sophomores + Scherps (see below) and myself, against the seniors and juniors. It was just ugly. Bob Eberling and JC Madey didn't have the best aim for the upper class man, but the more experienced runners were able to overcome a small obstacle, with the help of the sophomores.

"I had to just throw it. It was the only way the team would have a chance if it
worked out." Pat Callahan

As it would turn out, this would only put the sophomore team farther behind. The upperclassman cruised to an easy victory.

Thursday began with a meeting in room 210. We watched a summary of a legend of a cross country coach give a speech to a group of high school guys. Highlights, as given by Little O'c, Jack Husmann, and myself.

• Be smart. You can greatly effect the teams by decisions you make when no one is watching.



• Everyone can contribute. We just graduated some great runners, if you work, you will have a chance to run in big races.



• Do the little things.
  

Next we were off to Conway for tempos. Everyone did great. Some standouts however were Glen McGann, Collin Sullivan, Josh Pribe, Nick Martini, and Brian Scherping. Great work everybody.

The day of camp just kept getting better, with weights and core after the run back to De Smet.

Joke of the Day/Year: My back

The much anticipated last day of camp was here, when the fresh meet would run their first timed mile. The morning started with the varsity hopefuls running either a Grassier or Mosley, and Coach Traughber and Garwitz giving the freshman the little things talk along with passing out their very own personalized summer training schedule. My inside access continued, since I can't run.

Quote of the Day: After Coach Traughber instructed the freshman to jog down the 100 stretch and back as their strides before the big mile, one brave, freshman soul questioned,

"Are you kidding me?"

The gun went off. Blake Waters took lane 8 for the first 200 and took a big lead. My pick, Steven Placht, kept his composure, and ran his race. Steven took the lead after 800, and finished first with a time of 5:43, with Waters second. Great race by all.

What is the best way ever to end camp? Throw the B, and that's what we did. Once again, the freshman were split from the returning runners. After 10 minutes of scoreless, appalling B, the skins finally came through with a score. Shortly after, I tagged Coach Garwitz in, in what proved to be the turning point of the match. Coach and DUC member Michael Ahlheim led the shirts to a convincing, 5-1 come from behind victory. The B game was followed by Bread Co bagels, and bottom less, possibly expired Chocolate Milk. It was a great week of camp from all.

Good to hear from you Kevin. Must be great to be in a country other then America when the World Cup is going on.

"Dude, who is that guy?"

Brian Scherping

Everyone knows Brian, but he's new, so he gets a spacial mention. This three year track standout and winner of the Rookie of the Year and Most Improved Award is hanging up the soccer cleats for metall spikes. Brian looks to build off of the fitness level of track season for a great first/last cross country season.

In his spare time, Brian enjoys White Castles and Thanksgiving flag football games.

What to watch for: Moving from the 800 to 5k, and can Scherping be on time for morning practice?
-Potterman