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| Texas is one of only nine states in which girls don't run 5K in cross country. |
Two opposing stories from two highly respected coaches illustrate why a chasm currently knifes through the otherwise tranquil world of Texas girls high school cross country, why the movement to run a 5K instead of the traditional 2-mile race has divided schools big and small, urban and country, traditionally dominant and traditionally dormant.
The first story comes from Justin Leonard of Southlake Carroll. He coached his girls team to the 5A state championship and Nike South title earlier this month. They will compete for the Nike Cross Nationals team championship on Dec. 3 in Portland, Ore. One of his runners, whom he insisted he not name, has committed to run at a private university next year and will receive a 5 percent scholarship, a number that the college coach says could be 50 percent. The reason it’s not? Her 5K times. She hasn’t run many of those races in her career because of Texas’ current setup. Leonard says the coach reserves the better scholarships for runners with better 5K times and more 5K experience.
“I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this but ultimately it’s costing the parents and the runners millions of dollars,” he says.
The second comes from University of Texas track and cross country coach Steve Sisson. Katie Hoaldridge runs the 800m and 1500m for his team. Back in high school, Hoaldridge focused on the 800 and didn’t run high school cross country — that is, until Sisson suggested she do it. If she hadn’t, Sisson would not have recruited her and says he isn’t alone in that position when it comes to similar middle-distance runners.
“I don’t have a single girl on my team who is an 800 runner that didn’t run cross country in high school,” he says. “And I do believe that if they move up, a girl like Katie wouldn’t run cross country. She wouldn’t be seen.”
A year ago, Sisson shared this opinion in front of a large crowd of Texas high school coaches. Let’s just say that he didn’t receive a standing ovation.
For about 10 years, the top high school coaches have advocated increasing the distance of state-sponsored races (district, regional and state meet) to 5K from 2 miles, the movement gaining steam last year with the formal backing of the Cross Country Coaches Association of Texas (CCCAT). With a Facebook page, several local media stories and a survey the group claimed revealed 70 percent of the two largest classifications favored an extension, the group brought its case to the state with unprecedented fervor. And the distance stayed the same. The University Interscholastic League (UIL), Texas’ high school athletic association, had commissioned a survey of its own. At the big class level, 5A and 4A, 53 percent wanted to increase to 5K. But at the smaller classes 3A, 2A and 1A, an overwhelming majority wanted to keep the distance the same, thinking participation numbers would drop with a distance extension. Texas remained the only state besides Oklahoma to feature state-sanctioned races of 2 miles.
“I think we’re in a progressive society and it seems like we are not being very progressive,” says Denver Stone, coach of Kaufman High School, about 40 miles east of Dallas. “We’re Texas. We’re the Lone Star state — ‘stand on our own.’ But we’re afraid of another mile?”
The supporters of 5K races want the longer distance for recruiting advantages for athletes, the belief that 2 miles isn’t a true endurance test, the fear that 2-mile races don’t prepare elite runners for college and a big one, the reason Stone was getting at when he talked about a lack of progressiveness: sexism.
Texas has a history of lagging behind in girls sports. When girls basketball was introduced in the ’50s, they played half-court ball. Cross country was made a girls sport in 1975, three years after boys started running, and the girls ran only a mile for the first state championship. The limitation to 2 miles, 5K proponents believe, reflects similar values and outright ignorance. Multiple studies have shown that women runners are better suited for longer distances than men. As Katie Ruhala, a runner at 3A Lovejoy High School who finished second at the state meet this November puts it, “I really think the guys and girls should be equal; it’s not like, ‘Oh testosterone.’” Lovejoy coach Greg Christensen says Ruhala would have probably won the state meet had the distance been 5K. He and most of his athletes support an extension, placing them in the minority of similar-sized schools.
Smaller-class schools in Texas often feature a different type of cross country team. Most 2A and 1A schools, and even some at the 3A level, feature teams stocked with girls basketball players coached by the girls basketball coach. The coaches of the bigger, mostly suburban schools say they strive to win state championships and develop runners who dream of competing at the next level. More than sexism, more than the hope of better recruitment, proponents of extending the distance favor the move because they think it will advance the sport. They say the women’s basketball coaches moonlighting as cross country coaches are holding it back.
“All we’re asking is to run a 5K at district and you’ll never have to run it again because you won’t get out of district,” says Ray Baca, Canyon High School cross country coach and president of the CCCAT.
Tom Kennedy, who coaches Houston Cypress Fairbanks and surveyed multiple schools for the CCCAT on this subject in 2010, doesn’t even believe some of the data illustrating that many smaller class runners would quit if the distance was extended.
“I strongly say people who said they would quit were led by the coach,” he says.
But supporters of the 2-mile race aren’t just quiet voices in small Texas towns. Stanford women’s cross country coach PattiSue Plumer says Texas has it right. She has seen firsthand the injury epidemic that has plagued college-aged runners for years. Limiting races to 2 miles keeps training plans moderate, she says, and coaches’ fears of unfavorable recruiting is unfounded.
Plumer almost always cares solely for track results, saying that cross country races involve too many variables to accurately compare runners based on those times. A recent survey by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association revealed that Texas produced the most NCAA Division I all-region women runners in cross country this year.
The Nike and Foot Locker national 5K races routinely feature Texas girl runners, including last year’s Nike winner Rachel Johnson. In other words, runners from Texas compete well nationally at the high school and college level; why change it?
“A lot of coaches will think that X is why they don’t have what they want,” Sisson says. “They don’t look that if they get rid of X, is Y better or is it not?”
In October, the UIL ruled it would let superintendents from every school district in the state vote on race distance through a referendum ballot this spring. Individual classifications’ results will be considered independently from one another, meaning 5A could choose to have 5K races while other classes could choose 2-mile races. A simple majority wins, and the results of the referendum will be released in June. Kennedy says most coaches expected 5A to choose the longer distance, 4A to be very close and 3A, 2A and 1A to remain at 2 miles.
Regardless of what happens for any of the classes this spring, the suggestion for another change in distance cannot be brought up again for three years, per UIL rules. Even with that kind of a hiatus, the conflict might not exactly clear up. Kennedy, the Houston-area coach, has mentioned the possibility of parents suing the state, arguing the current racing distance of girls cross country as gender inequality in violation of Title IX.
A cross country race, in essence, is simple. Seven runners make up a team, and they try to excel individually throughout an off-road course, always knowing that the key to team success involves sticking together in a pack. Deciding how long such a race should be, for high school girls in Texas, has clearly caused some separation.
