CREDIT: FANSHAWE ATHLETICS
Fanshawe’s Jocelyn Fry has made a psotive impact with Fanshawe’s cross country team. Fry, a rookie runner, has finished first in the first three meets of the season.

Fanshawe's cross country teams will once again be top contenders at this year's OCAA Championships. In their first three exhibition races, the men grabbed gold and the women took silver.

Last year, the men finished second in the National Championships after one runner collapsed just 200 meters from the finish line. “All the key scorers are back,” said head coach John Loney. “They know what they wanted last year, what they were close to getting and that's really been their focus for the past year: going back and getting that gold.”

Coach Loney is also very eager to see what the women's team can accomplish this season, “The really exciting part is on the girls' side, 'cuz the girls are finally back. They had a bit of a down year last year; their numbers were down and we had some injury problems. This year the numbers are way up and they're really competing well.”

Rookie runner Jocelyn Fry has set the bar high, grabbing the top spot in the first three exhibition races. In the best of her first three races, Fry ran 5 km in 18:19 at the Seneca-King Invitational.

Their success is a result of hard work not just during the season. Loney said that training hard in the spring and summer is crucial, “The summer's the key, the season really starts in the spring and what you're doing from May to August really lays the foundation of how you're going to do in the fall. All the guys that are doing really well, their season started months and months ago.”

When the season begins, it's no walk in the park for these athletes, who run almost every day of the week. The team practices twice a week together, but Daniel Bright, who's going into his third season with the team, said he runs seven days a week, often individually and sometimes with other members of the team. “Sometimes we like to call each other up, and get runs together during the day, whoever doesn't have class.”

“This time of the season we're working mostly on strength,” said Loney. “It's longer running, short recoveries, just getting their bodies used to holding a higher pace for a longer period of time and then later will come speed work — that's the last thing before the big races come.”

Becoming a tight-knit group has also led to their success. Bright emphasized the importance of sticking together as a team. “That's what I wanna get across: this a team effort and team value, it's never an individual sport. We don't do well because one guy does well, we do well because the whole team does well and that's the idea of cross country running.” It's a philosophy held by Coach Loney as well, he continued. “Our coach, Chucker (Loney), likes to consider the team as a rock,” said Bright. “It's a tight unit, a rock is indestructible, it can't break.”

Being a part of the team has also helped Bright inside the classroom, as he's just entered his second year in the Child and Youth Worker program at Fanshawe. “I have major attention deficit in class,” said Bright, “so keeping up the endorphin level, and running itself and extracurricular helps the ADD, helps me stay focused in class. The idea that I'm running on a team also helps me in class because I go, ‘Wait a sec, I have to keep my marks up, I have to stay focused and I have to study.'”