UP cross country runners share moment of thanks

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Rob Conner called a team meeting for 6 p.m. Monday in the Hall of Fame Room at the Chiles Center.

The University of Portland cross country coach didn't invite the team's videographer. He didn't invite the recruits who had visited earlier that afternoon.

Conner had an idea. He arranged 40 chairs in a oval. On the wall were photos and placards of the greatest moments in the athletic history of the small university on The Bluff in North Portland -- detailing women's soccer titles and other notable achievements.

Two days earlier, the Pilots had taken second place in the NCAA Division 1 men's cross country championships. Second place. The best in Conner's 28 years.

Three years ago around this time, Conner sat in his office and looked at a third-place trophy and beamed with pride. He turned to his assistant and said: "You know what? That's a once-in-a-career trophy. We're not going to do that again."

The 2014 team had performed as well as he could have possibly expected. Even better.

But as Conner lined up chairs Monday, he knew he had been wrong. The 2017 season and the runner-up trophy had topped it.

At 6 o'clock, the guys arrived, all 40 of them.

Conner instructed the eight who had traveled to Louisville, Ky., to sit in descending order of finish to his right. Everyone else could sit where they pleased.

The coach made a couple of observations about the team's most successful weekend and then passed the runner-up trophy to his left. He asked every runner in the room say a few words, share their thoughts and feelings, and then pass the trophy.

What happened next, and over the course of nearly an hour, brought Conner to the brink of tears.

The trophy might as well have been a turkey leg. It was symbolic of something special, but the gathering of young men turned the meeting into an hour of Thanksgiving.

A freshman said: "I'm so thankful for how inclusive and welcoming you've been."

One of the slowest guys on the team, a Computer Science major who doesn't say much, said: "The thing I look forward to the most each day is coming to the locker room and going to practice. It's the highlight of my day."

A runner from The Netherlands said: "These other schools are rich, but they are rich in the wrong areas. We are rich in culture. We are rich in teamwork."

Somebody looked around the entire room and said: "Thank you for being my friends, you guys."

There were a couple of shaky hand-offs. Conner interjected, light-heartedly: "You drop it, you're in trouble."

One of the B team guys turned to Logan Orndorf, who showed huge improvement to become sixth man (and 62nd at NCAAs), and said: "Thank you for showing me what's possible."

Nick Hauger, who was 26th this year after placing 154th in 2016, was one of the last to speak.

Hauger and Jeff Thies had been charged with re-booting the team after the third-place season in 2014.

But 2015 had started off with the death of a teammate by suicide the day before classes began. The grief had been difficult to recover from. Focus was lost. There were injuries. Portland finished ninth on a muddy day in Seattle at the NCAA West Regional and failed to advance to nationals for the first time in 10 years.

Out of the mourning, and then disappointment, came a rebirth of resolve.

The team worked harder and also became more inclusive. Compassion and caring took on greater importance.

Conner doesn't cut anybody who's willing to log the 100-mile weeks he asks of his runners. He loves the guys who buy in, many of them diamonds in the rough. Year after year freshmen go onto the trails in Forest Park and learn what it takes to endure elite collegiate cross country.

The work is hard and the way to get through it is to help one another, from the first man to the 40th.

Last spring, eight guys from the University of Portland, a private campus with 4,000 students and no football team, broke 30 minutes in the 10,000 meters. Eight. That's more than the entire Big 12 Conference. More than the entire Ivy League.

Conner managed to add a couple of extra guys over the summer. A fifth-year transfer from Minnesota named Matt Welch. A Frenchman with experience at the European U-23 Track and Field Championships, Emmanuel Roudolff-Levisse.

Conner calls these guys "instant offense," but is quick to note that Portland would have placed fourth -- and earned a podium spot -- without them.

When Hauger spoke at the team meeting, he related what he had done at last Friday's course run-through in Louisville. He had studied the layout and decided that he was going to own the final 2,000 meters. He was going to hold himself accountable and put everything he had into the hill climbs and the downhill sprint to the finish at E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park.

Hauger told his teammates: "I was getting really tired and still had the hills up ahead. I felt as though I didn't know if I could hold myself to that. So I pictured our group of guys (back in Portland), up early and watching us on the webcast. Sending us good-luck texts. I said I need to do it for those guys and the sacrifices they've made. I need to make them proud. It gave me energy. I passed 10 more guys.

"Thanks for motivating me at the hardest moment of my race."

Everyone had a chance to speak, from the guys who had basked in glory in Kentucky to the down-the-line guys who rode in a van driven by Conner at 7 a.m. the day after the West Coast Conference Championships to run at the not-so-elite Beaver Classic in Corvallis.

Conner reveled in the texts and messages he received from former alums the past couple of days, congratulating him on an amazing second-place finish.

But what happened at the Monday meeting was something memorable, too.

"To sit down and vocalize all these feelings of gratitutde for one antoher, it was something really special," Thies said.

Conner was misty eyed through the entire thing. He was blown away by the outpouring of affection and commitment that the guys had for one another.

"It might be the greatest thing I've ever done in coaching, right there," Conner said. "It was unbelievable."

The athletes on the team mostly dispersed to their homes Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hauger was headed home to Spokane to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

"I couldn't be more thankful for that (team) moment," he said of Monday's meeting. "Now we go home to our families, and past coaches and teammates, and all of that gratitude (for them) comes to the surface."

Champions like Northern Arizona, or second place like Portland, it didn't really matter what the trophy said in the Monday meeting.

"It was still a win for everyone," Hauger said.