PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING

When the St. Lawrence College, Kingston’s varsity running team finished their 2007 season, they had one thing on their mind… hosting the National Championships in 2008. With the seed of having a successful showing planted, several veteran runners on the team made a decision to train year round as a team and finish as well as possible on their home course.

This is not your ordinary group of athletes though; they are a dedicated group of people from different walks of life who have come together over a common goal. Now the presence of the group has snowballed and the small quartet of runners that started it all continues to grow and gather momentum.

Ben Burr, a second year student for the Vikings is one of the four returning runners and has assumed the role of leader and apparently it comes naturally. “Ben is someone I look up to and admire,” glowed the first year student and teammate Tasha Derzekos of her captain. “He went though a lot of ups and downs in his (running) career and continued to work on what he needed to be better. He has a presence about him and is a strong athlete, but doesn’t let the little things get to him either. If I can run with that sort of mind set in my running career, it would be great.”

A year ago Burr and his teammates decided they wanted to put their best foot forward and compete for a medal in 2008, not only at the provincial championships, but at the Nationals as well. “At nationals I talked to (head coach) Randy (Zabukovec) about what our goals would be for next year and we decided to train all year (in preparation) and see how things went. And since then, people just started showing up,” Burr said with a proud smile.

Although the team had made the decision to start in the winter months, Burr did fall slightly behind some of his teammates early. “Some of them started running in December as a group, but I didn’t start running until end of January early February. I had to take some time off to recover from the flu. I was bed ridden for over two weeks,” recalled the Law Clerk student.

Recruiting is always key to any program and sometimes you find the most inspirational people in the most unlikely of places. “Over the summer I managed to recruit a nursing student when I was ushering at convocation and managed to convince him to come out and run with us. He was a wrestler who was 210 and he has since lost 30 pounds. We all have different ability levels and we all get along great. Everyone is here because they want to be here. Everybody who makes the commitment is a part of the varsity team, we don’t make any cuts.”

Training for success is always a challenge, but for this group it is now just a way of life. “We practice as a team Monday to Thursday in the evenings or right after class and take Friday’s off. On Saturday it is just a run and then on Sunday we will practice for an extra workout.”

As on outside observer you could think teammates would grow a bit wary of spending that much time together, but that could be the furthest from the truth. “We are a very like minded group and we all push ourselves and each other,” said Derzekos. “If you are having a bad day, we can count on them to be the ones who pick you back up and tells you it will be all ok. And we all do the same for each other.”

At the college level coaching can be as much of a key to success as the athletes themselves. This season Zabukovec and John Reid are joined by 2007 OCAA Champion, Ingrid Golemiec-Stover, who has made the transition to coach as a part of the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association Female Apprentice Coach Program.

“(Randy, John and Ingrid) are the most supportive coaches ever and it has been a privilege to work with them,” reflected Derzekos. “They are not just athletic coaches, they are life coaches. They have a way to make everything seem ok even when it isn’t,”

Unlike most high school seniors, Derzekos made her decision early to become involved with her soon to be varsity team. “I made a last minute decision to run track for my high school, but we didn’t have a great program at our school, so I had already planned to come St. Lawrence and… Randy has been my coach ever since,” she said proudly.

Now that the season is underway, Barr has his own coach-like take on how his team will fair this year. “Personally, I have set goals and would like to medal at provincials as a team and at nationals. Brant Stachel (a rookie) is doing really well and I think he is probably going to be around the top 20 at provincials.” And then there is the upstart Tasha Derzekos. “She hates to hear about how well she runs, but she could medal too.”

Time will tell if all of the training will pay off on the scoring charts, but there is one thing for sure, this group of athletes are a special breed who have found an appreciation for the outdoors, camaraderie and most of all their common zest for the running life.

NOTEWORTHY: Freshman runner Tasha Derzekos ran to a first place finish at her first cross country meet this past weekend on the National Championship course in Kingston.