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USA Discovering New Winning Pack
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
September 1, 2020
Mike Peter knew his Unionville-Sebewaing boys cross country team would have to make adjustments for the 2020 season, and deal with a different set of circumstances.
And that was before COVID-19 gripped the nation.
“We lost some team dynamic – a team isn’t all about time and place all the time,” the USA coach said. “Two of our senior boys that left the team, they really brought a lot just as teammates to our boys side. We’re trying to find that again. It takes time to rebuild that again when the team dynamic changes. We’ll have to fight a little harder this year and try to find our new normal.”
The Patriots are coming off a runner-up finish at the 2019 Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals, the best finish in program history. That followed a fifth-place finish the year before which had been the program best.
While they’re off to a slower start this season, they feel the pieces are there to continue that statewide success.
“I think we have a very good chance of coming back to state,” senior Bryce Langmaid said. “I think we have a chance to come back and be top-three again, or win a state championship.”
Three of the five runners who scored at the 2019 Finals are back, led by Langmaid who had an all-state finish at 22nd. Juniors Ty Pavlichek (38th) and Jacob VanHove (53rd) are back as well. The Patriots are without all-state finisher Bentley Alderson, who placed 16th as a junior but has decided to play soccer his senior year.
But the strength of USA’s 2019 team was its pack – all five scoring runners a year ago finished among the top 40 team scorers at the Final. That pack is something the Patriots are currently trying to establish.
“Since Day 1, we’ve been really close, really tight, and Coach has preached pack running,” Langmaid said. “That would be one of the biggest successes of how we run, and that carried over to how tight we are.”
While that pack is still looking to come together on the course this season, it was a big benefit through the spring and summer. With track season canceled because of the pandemic, and in a world of social distancing, Peter said his team did a good job of getting together to run in small groups.
“The nice thing is that there’s a brother and sisterhood with our group,” Peter said. “They are fantastic about texting each other, communicating with one another and getting out for a run. Once we knew track wasn’t going to happen, it was just about packing on miles, and I think for the mental health of a young person who is a person who competes, that was important. Our team is really good about reaching out to each other, and luckily, we didn’t have to meet to do it.”
Staying focused on running helped, but it wasn’t always easy.
“At times I wasn’t,” Pavlichek admitted. “I slowed down and didn’t run as much. When it came closer to the season I started to run more, and I was just hoping we could have a season.”
What helped them get through it, though, was each other.
“I know this put a lot of stress on families, friends and athletes in USA and Michigan,” Langmaid said. “I tried to stay close with everyone and talk with everyone to see how they’re doing. If someone wanted to meet up, I would do that to run with them and talk with them and let them get things off their mind.”
The Patriots have competed twice this season, at their own quad and the Ithaca Early Invitational. They were second in the quad (losing via tiebreaker to Mayville), and fifth at Ithaca.
“It’s hard to come out of a season where you’re second in the state and not feel that pressure again,” Peter said. “Sometimes, I think after having a year where we got first place at almost every meet, it’s hard to come back and uphold that. There’s an unspoken pressure that kids put on themselves, and they have to be OK with a second or third some of the time, and not always running your best time.”
While the results haven’t been there yet for the Patriots, just being back in competition and wearing the school colors felt like a victory.
“From my perspective, it was just wonderful to see a uniform of any of the schools,” Peter said. “It was nice to see kids from other communities at least roughly near each other, and competing. It was nice to see the joy they had to do something they loved.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) USA's Bryce Langmaid (736) races to an all-state finish at last season's LPD4 Final at Michigan International Speedway. (Middle) Ty Pavlichek is another of three USA scorers back from the 2019 runner-up team. (Click to see more from RunMichigan.com.)
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Lee Learns From Best, Runs To Be Next
August 18, 2015
By Bill Khan
Special for Second Half
FENTON — Jacob Lee attained a measure of fame last summer through his association with the No. 1 high school distance runner in the nation.
However, the Fenton High School senior gained much more from the experience than an appearance on the cover of a major national running magazine.
When Running Times profiled Grant Fisher in its September 2014 issue, his training partners shared in the glory. The cover of the magazine showed Fisher and five visible training partners doing repeats on a sledding hill at Bicentennial Park in Grand Blanc.
On the far right of the cover shot was Lee, who had trained since eighth grade with Fisher and a group of predominantly Grand Blanc runners led by coach Mike Scannell.
"That was pretty awesome, actually," Lee said. "I saw myself. I knew the article was about Grant. It's still pretty cool to be training with all those high-caliber guys."
Fisher was a two-time national Foot Locker cross country champion who won two cross country and five track and field titles in MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 meets, setting the all-time Finals record of 4:00.28 in the 1,600-meter run as a senior last spring.
Fisher raised the bar incredibly high for the next generation of Michigan high school runners. Having trained daily in the offseason with Fisher, Lee had a unique front-row perspective as Fisher progressed into one of the top high school distance runners ever in this country.
Lee certainly hopes to take the lessons he learned in training with Fisher onto the cross country course this fall and the track next spring. But, beyond that, he will seek to apply lessons learned while training in Scannell's group to other areas of his life.
"It was incredible to train with Grant Fisher and all those guys up at Genesys (Athletic Club in Grand Blanc) with the level they train at," Lee said. "It's not just athletics. They strive to do great in the classroom and the community. That's what I like about it. They have household goals, academic goals. We just strive to achieve them."
One lesson that Lee has learned all on his own is that, no matter how well you've trained and how attainable your goals might appear, strange things can happen in MHSAA Finals.
He was primed to grab a top-30 spot last year after finishing 37th in the Division 1 cross country meet as a sophomore. Things were going according to plan through the mile mark before the race began to unravel for Lee. His body mysteriously betrayed him. Slowing down just a little bit can spell disaster in the Finals, as Lee discovered by dropping to 212th place out of 256 runners with a time of 17:24.3.
"I was feeling good between the first and second miles," Lee said. "I was right on pace. I was in the top 30-40 group. About the second mile, I started cramping up. I don't know what happened exactly. My back kinda tightened up, too. I couldn't move as much. My stride became super short. I'm not really sure what happened that day. I'm just making sure it's not going to happen again."
The Finals aside, it was a season in which Lee lowered his personal best from 16:13.4 as a sophomore to 15:46.75 as a junior. He broke 16 minutes twice.
“I thought the season overall was a great success,” he said. “I wish the state meet would’ve gone better, because I know my fitness level was higher than what I finished.”
Lee's shot at redemption came at the Division 1 Track and Field Finals, where he placed 13thas a sophomore in the 3,200-meter run in 9:38.78. He was peaking at the right time, running 9:23.6 on May 1 in Saline and 9:27.9 two weeks later in the regional meet.
As was the case in cross country, Lee was positioned right where he'd hoped to be. But bad things sometimes happen when so many fast feet are in close proximity. Again, disaster struck for Lee in the biggest meet of the season.
"I tripped and fell with 800 to go," Lee said. "I got spiked in the head, actually. I've still got a little bit of a mark. So, I wish that would've gone better, because I was in the top eight going into the last 800, but there's nothing you can do about that. I was right behind (Davison's) Nick Schmidt, who ended up coming in sixth."
The 5-foot-7 1/2, 122-pound Lee got to his feet and finished 21st with a time of 9:37.23.
“When I first met Jake, I thought he was someone’s younger brother who happened to be training with the team and Mike’s guys,” Fisher said. “Jake’s always been one of the smaller guys. Because of that, he has to make up for that in his work ethic and intensity at every practice. I definitely have a lot of respect for him because of that. He’s racing against guys who are 6-3, 170 or whatever. Jake’s not the biggest dude. Jake has a focus that is pretty special. He brings his all at every practice.”
While Lee no longer has the Stanford-bound Fisher to push him in training, he will have some strong talent within his own league to keep him sharp throughout the regular season.
Fenton competes in the Flint Metro League, which will feature Clio senior Ethan Taljonick and Holly senior Dilon Lemond. Taljonick finished 16th in last season’s Division 2 Final, while Lemond was 39th in Division 1.
Lee's goal is to finish among the top five at the MHSAA Finals, but along the way he hopes to emerge from that speedy trio as the Metro League champion.
"The competition is really high in our own league, so it should be a good race for the individual top spot," said Lee, whose personal best came when he won a talent-laden league jamboree at the Cummings Center in Mount Morris. "All of the league meets are pretty good competition, especially the ones with Clio and Holly. There's no slacking off when it comes to racing those guys, for sure."
Lee also will get a good daily push in practice because of a coaching change that has former Fenton all-stater Jesse Anderson in charge of the cross country program. Anderson was 11thin 2006 and 10thin 2007 at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Cross Country Finals. He still runs at a high level in road races.
“It’s going to be a huge benefit, a huge advantage for us,” Lee said. “Not only does he know what he’s talking about, but he runs. He knows all of this great stuff about running, he owns a shoe store, but he can also run with us and tell by our individual fitness what we’re capable of.”
And what is Lee capable of this season
“It’s pretty limitless, really,” said Anderson, who calls coaching Fenton his “dream job.” “We want to keep him healthy. He’s coming in with a very, very strong base. We’ll see how he responds to training.”
Lee began running in fifth grade with the encouragement of his physical education teacher at North Road Elementary in Fenton.
“We had this thing called Mileage Club at North Road,” he said. “He turned me on to that. I started running. I really liked it. I kept running every single day to get toe tokens. Once you get five miles per card, you get a token. It was a race between me and my friends to get the most tokens. You put them on a shoelace and wear them around; it’s pretty cool.”
As cool as they were back then, a medal from the MHSAA Finals on Nov. 7 would be even cooler.
And for his part, Fisher was glad to see friends like Lee make his Running Times cover.
“I was really happy they picked that picture,” Fisher said. “They were taking all these options for a cover shot. To have that group of guys on the cover was really special, because those are the guys I train with day in and day out. A lot of times, they’ll feature me or Mike.
“Jake is the younger guy, but he’s very dedicated to running. To get him on the cover and the other guys, when they first saw it and had the magazine in their hands, their reaction was pretty cool. It was definitely more special for me. I’d rather have it that way than an individual shot of me.”
Bill Khan served as a sportswriter at The Flint Journal from 1981-2011 and currently contributes to the State Champs! Sports Network. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Fenton's Jacob Lee runs with a pack during last season's MHSAA Division 1 Cross Country Final at Michigan International Speedway. (Middle) Lee, on left, turns the corner during a race at the 2013 Brighton Invitational. (Top photo by RunMichigan.com, middle by Bill Khan.)