This is the first part of my travels along the West Coast to visit high school cross country teams. West Coast XC has been around for over two years. In our first summer of West Coast XC, my youngest daughter asked me what I planned to do for content in the summer. Good question. She grabbed my phone and asked on our Instagram story if teams would like us to visit their school. Now we have high school cross country teams to fill out a Google Survey and we try our best to fit in a visit. This is our third summer visiting schools. Since I am a high school teacher (retired from coaching in 2022), I am able to visit schools during the summer time.
Cottage Grove High School
I looked at our survey spreadsheet to see if a school was in or near Eugene during our stay for the Olympic Trials. We were in Eugene for Sunday and Monday's trials and I found that Cottage Grove High School was practicing Monday morning. Cottage Grove is about 25 miles south of Eugene and I left the hotel to meet the team. Coach Ricky Knutson was ready for me as he brought a bike for me as the kids were running on an old railroad track called Row River Trail that is now paved trail. I strapped my two cameras on my shoulders as Coach Knutson and I rode the path with our bikes. Cottage Grove boys were too fast for me even though I was riding the bike! The athletes ran to Dorena Lake and back to the start of the run. Many of the community members cheered on the runners as they walked on the path. Since Cottage Grove is a smaller school, many of the athletes participate in a number of team sports at the school. Once the practice ended, athletes hurriedly took off to other summer high school team practices.
Read about Cottage Grove's summer season HERE
Wildwood Running
Wildwood Running invited us to spend the day in Eugene during the Olympic Trials. The plan was to go to Eugene for the day. Eugene is about two hours from my house and it is common for me to commute back and forth in one day for meets. I met the Wildwood Running Camp on the corner of 19th and Agate. While waiting for the campers to arrive, I saw numerous famous runners going on a run and Citius Mag broadcasting across the street. Juliette Whittaker of Stanford was the celebrity athlete attending the ON running event. My wife showed me a video of the Stanford track athletes giving a tour of the campus in Dutch for a class project (Check out the video) and Juliette was in the video and I complimented her on the presentation.
I have known Wildwood Running Camp founders Marie Davis Markham and Robyn McGillis from my time coaching at Aloha High School and they are doing amazing work educating, promoting and encouraging the female athletes at Wildwood Running. I have two daughters who ran in high school and college and their vision for girls in the sport is one that I obviously support.
After the run, the girls met at the Runnerspace House in Eugene for a clinic with BYU coach Diljeet Taylor and Olympians Nia Akins, Jaida Ross and Juliette Whittaker sharing their stories. I heard from other photographers that Runnerspace bought this amazing house near Hayward Field and I wanted to check it out for myself. When I put on the cross country invitational called Nike Portland XC, we switched out internet landing spot to Runnerspace in 2009. Runnerspace was at the beginning stages of their company when we joined their site. I had a front seat view of the growth of Runnerspace and now I have a front seat view of the growth of Wildwood Running.
Read about Wildwood Running Camp HERE
McNary High School
McNary High School is located in Keizer, OR which is just north of Salem, the state capital of Oregon. It is about an hour drive from my house and McNary asked me to visit last summer so I wanted to see them this year. Plus, about eight of their athletes filled out the survey to visit. I have known Coach Josh Christensen from his time at Lincoln and Columbia River and he is building a successful program at McNary. The team met at Keizer Rapids Park which is close to the high school. The park had a wonderful forested path trail that the athletes used to do a wander. One of my highlights of my summer visits is the time I get to spend with coaches and talk about coaching. Coach Christensen knows the sport and also has a great rapport with his athletes.
Read about McNary's summer season HERE
Bishop Blanchet High School
Earlier I explained that it doesn't bother me to drive two hours to Eugene for a meet and then drive back home in the same day. Seattle is three hours from my house it is common for me to drive Saturday morning to the Dempsey Indoor facility at the University of Washington, take pictures and then drive home on the same day. Bishop Blanchet is located in Seattle and I drove to their practice and back in one day. The girls and boys have separate programs (common in Washington and California, but not in Oregon). I took pictures of the girls warming up and then the teams split and I spent the rest of the practice with the boys. When it comes to Seattle, I am the typical tourist where I know the Space Needle or Pike's Market (and University of Washington for the indoor season). I was unfamiliar with the neighborhood near Bishop Blanchet. The boys ran around Green Lake and I had never been to the lake. It was an amazing setting for a run. There is a paved bike path that goes around the lake and also a crushed gravel path too. What a great place to run!
Because of the length of the warm up to the hill repeats area and the unusually hot Seattle weather, Coach John O'Leary drove some of his younger athletes in the school yellow bus to the workout. I followed Coach O'Leary's yellow bus thinking, while navigating the traffic around the popular lake, coaching is more complicated than people may realize.
Read about Bishop Blanchet's summer season HERE
Spokane Group Run
My family went up to the Canadian Rockies for our vacation and my younger daughter suggested that I organize a group run in Spokane since I was staying there on the way back from the trip. I mentioned earlier how I often drive to Eugene or Seattle in one day for a meet. Spokane is about six hours from my house so it is not easy for me to get to Spokane for meets. Because of the distance, I had never been to a summer practice in Spokane. For fans of cross country, Spokane holds a special place in the history of distance running from the Bloomsday Run to Gerry Lindren racing in the Olympics as a high schooler to the Mead High School teams of the 90s to North Central's dominance of NXN ten years ago.
The challenge of organizing a group run is that I am not familiar with Spokane and places to meet for a run. I contacted Keenan Gray who ran the Runners WA site and graduated from Gonzaga. He recommended Manito Park. My daughter recommended I also contact Lewis and Clark High School since it is near Manito Park and would know runs near the park. Thanks to both tips, we had a successful group run. We had several teams show up (West Valley, Lewis and Clark, University and Gonzaga Prep) and Gemma from Lewis and Clark High School recommended a run that was easy to follow for those not familiar with this part of Spokane.
Read about the Spokane Group run HERE
Jesuit High School
The shortest trip so far this summer was a fifteen minute drive to Jesuit High School in Portland. Jesuit Cross Country is one of the most successful programs in Oregon history. Head coach Tom Rothenberger has been the head coach since 1982. I met Tom and the team on the Jesuit track because the athletes planned on running on campus or near the campus due to Jesuit hosting a cross country camp on the track later in the morning.
The track has been resurfaced and Tom showed me the new changes on the track. Jesuit and Aloha, where I used to coach, are in the same athletic league and I have known Tom since I started at Aloha in 1992. I taught my athletes the idea of "Robbing the bank" which means when you see someone doing something better than you, watch that person, learn from them and "steal" their idea. I have watched Tom and his teams in the past thirty years and have certainly "robbed the bank" from Jesuit. My oldest daughter was being recruited to run for a number of WCC schools. Most of the WCC schools are Catholic universities and my wife and I met with Tom to give us tips on each school in the WCC since many of his athletes ran for those schools. Tom is always willing to share his knowledge.
Read about Jesuit's summer season HERE
Mercer Island
This was my second trip up to Seattle this summer. I try to get to Washington for meets as much as I can, but this past track season I wasn't able to get to Washington during the regular season. I am making up for that this summer. Mercer Island is actually on an island (I used to teach and coach at Channel Islands High School in California and we were not on an island). What added to the day was that Coach Susan Empey celebrated her birthday on my visit. The athletes celebrated by having cupcakes at the end of the practice and the athletes sang "Happy Birthday" to her. According to Coach Empey, the athletes commonly jump into the lake afterward a run at the park. As I walked to the lake, I noticed two of the runners were already in the water with jet skis. I had never been to Mercer Island and the view from the park was amazing.
Read about Mercer Island's summer season HERE
Sehome High School
When I saw that Sehome filled out the survey to visit their team, I was interested because Sehome is a strong program and the team has a clever Instagram account. Sehome is located in Bellingham which is about twenty miles from the Canadian border and a long drive from the Portland area. I saw on the survey they filled out that they have a Saturday run. My wife agreed to come with me and make a weekend out of it. I have been to Vancouver BC a few times and we have either driven through Bellingham or stopped there for gas. This was a chance for both of us to check out the area.
I met with Coach Kevin Ryan and his athletes at the Interurban Trail near the Fairhaven section of Belllingham. Coach Ryan drove me to various road crossings of the trail so I could take pictures. While driving to running spots, I got a great view of the San Juan Islands across the Bellingham Bay. Like my time with Cottage Grove earlier this summer, the community biking, running or walking on the trail all seemed connected to the Sehome program. The time we spent driving in the car was like a mini coaches clinic and Coach Ryan knows the sport.
After the practice, my wife and I checked out the town of Fairhaven and watched the Olympics at a restaurant. We then went on a walk to see Whatcom Falls, drove along the Chuckanut Road with the view of the San Juan Islands. As we drove through Seattle, we stopped at Green Lake for a walk. People were playing volleyball on the grass while others were paddle boarding in the lake. It was a glorious day at Green Lake. This was the same lake that I saw earlier this summer with Bishop Blanchet. West Coast is the best coast.
Read about Sehome's summer season HERE
Check out part two of my travels later in August!
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