Cross country is one of the most overlooked and forgotten sports in the sports world, but Evanston runners have been bringing it some well-deserved attention. This year especially, the boys team has been at its peak, winning one meet and placing top five in most others, along with sending Senior Sam Froum to state. The team had a senior-heavy lineup, with eleven seniors in total. These eleven have been running together for all of high school and some even throughout middle school, building bonds and preparing for their last and best season.
To get better at Cross country, you have to run, run, and keep running. “We spend an incredible amount of time together, like three, four hours a day for the past three and a half years,” said senior captain Emmitt Wilson.
“They immediately became friends, so they’ve been tight since the beginning,” remarked head coach Don Michellin Jr.
Being such close friends has made them “come out of their shell,” as senior Ghaiyyas Salaam noted. Sharing an interest in running, it was easy for them to become friends quickly, and be nervous around new people.
Cross country is an extremely tough sport that requires great endurance. If you ask anyone if they would want to join the cross country team, chances are they will say, “No, why would I want to run all day long?” But, these seniors love it. What others don’t realize is that when you have your friends of four years pushing you every day, it not only makes you want to run, but run faster.
“Everyone feels supported in practice and as a person, so that makes it a comfortable environment,” Wilson explained.
The seniors wanted their last season to be a good one, so they took their training into their own hands. “Everyone has slightly different running philosophies so this summer we came together and strategized how we were going to structure the workouts to benefit us the most this season,” said senior captain Eli Coustan. “When we come up with the workouts, we’re really coming up with our vision for the season and trying to translate that into our practices.”
Along with making everyone feel comfortable, friendship can cause harmless rivalries, too.
Senior captain Sam Froum made varsity his first year running as a freshman and hasn’t looked back since. He qualified for state in both his junior and senior years.
“The rest of the team walks around with Sam and people are like, ‘Oh wow, Sam you’re great,’ ‘Sam you’re so fast.’Being around that made them want to run faster,” noted Michelin.
Senior Patrick Tu said, “Since we argue in practice about who’s faster, I have this subconscious thought to beat all of them.” That really is the mindset you need to have in a race to be as successful as this team has been.
“This has been my best team since 1999. … There wasn’t even a captain in ‘99, they just focused on winning. I don’t know if that would work with this team because there are so many leaders here,” said Michelin.
This season the team had four captains instead of the traditional one or two. They were seniors, Sam Froum, Emmitt Wilson, Eli Coustan, and Emir Arber Bombaci.
A good team culture and teamwork leads to accomplishments. This season the team did not win every meet, but they did win the Warren Invitational and placed highly in the others, getting second at CSL Conference and 10th at Sectionals, missing out on the State finals by three spots. Froum qualified as an individual running 15:11 in the three-mile.
As the boys cross country team showed, the most important thing for a team is to build strong and healthy relationships with your teammates. Using these bonds, these eleven seniors have worked together all four years of their high school career to get where they are now. Through all of their hard work over the years, they’ve had one of the best seasons you could ask for.
