They’re undefeated against New Hampshire teams. They’ve traveled out of state to find more competition and have beaten some of the best in New England and New York. They will be the favorites in Saturday’s Division I state championships, but the boys from the Concord High cross country team were also the D-I favorites last year and wound up second to Pinkerton Academy, a result that has the Crimson Tide extra hungry this year.
“That sting of defeat last year sparked a lot of training and everybody was on board,” Concord junior Forest MacKenzie said. “No one was reluctant to train over the summer and trust in the process. We were called chokers all year and that’s one of the worst things that you can be called. So that definitely sparked a change and it will help us, honestly, in the long run.”
MacKenzie and fellow junior Eli Boesch-Dining have been Concord’s top two all season, “and having that exceptional one-two punch has been a major factor in propelling our team into recognition at a level beyond New Hampshire’s borders,” Tide Coach Tristan Black-Ingersoll said. The coach is quick to point out that Concord wouldn’t be thriving without its depth and that after MacKenzie and Boesch-Dining, “there has been a mix of nine or 10 other runners who have been in the rest of the top seven at different points.”
That mix includes senior Nate Nichols, one of the team’s most consistent performers all year, and sophomores David Cook and Ryan Devine, who figure to only get better and keep the Tide running strong in the future. Those three will be running for Concord on Saturday at Derryfield Park in Manchester, as will MacKenzie, Boesch-Dining, senior Ollie Spencer and senior Matt O’Brien, and those four already hold a special place in the 2017 cross country season – they are among the seven runners who have finished under the 16-minute mark this fall.
The Monitor spoke with the four sub-16s to find out what fuels them, and the team, on the cross country course.
When did you start running? “My dad (Jim) is the coach at the Deerfield Community School, and he started coaching there when I was in first grade and from then on I started practicing with the team, but that wasn’t the first time I started running. The first time, I was like 5 years old and I went out on a run with my dad in Bear Brook and he said we’re going for a little 1- or 2-miler and we went 6 miles, the first run I ever did in my entire life. He kept saying, ‘We’ll finish at the next turn, the next turn,’ and we ended up doing 6 miles.”
Did you enjoy it? “Right away I loved the sport. I knew that it was I was meant to do. My middle name is Miles, so I think I was born to run. I fell in love with it right away.
Is Miles some kind of family name? “No, it’s straight up about running miles.”
Wait, are you named after Forrest Gump, too? “No, no, my name is spelled with one ‘r.’ Like the wilderness, basically.”
What’s been the key to the team’s success this year? “Probably coaching and the bond that we have with our team. Every single day we are just joking and laughing and we do not stress at all. It is far from a stressful environment every time we go to practice.”
You guys have a lot of big races coming up, the D-I meet, Meet of Champions, New Englands, the North-East Regional Championship in New York, are you ready? “So last year when we went to New Englands and that New York meet, we were shell shocked. Everyone else was our speed and we didn’t know what to do. … This year we set out to go against the best and we definitely feel comfortable that we belong and that will definitely help us in those big races.”
Do you have any pre-race routines? “So what I always do, and the other Deerfield guys (O’Brien, Devine and Cook are also from Deerfield) is right before we go, we always say, ‘For Rose.’ And that’s symbolic of Rose Robert. She was from Deerfield and on the cross country team and (in 2013) she was running about 100 yards from my house and died of an epileptic seizure. It was tragic. That was just so hard. And back in middle school we got black socks that had a rose on the side of them and we always ran in those, and even to this day every time before a race we’ll say, ‘For Rose.’ Because our motto is basically, ‘We run for those who can’t.’ So people like Rose who loved running and passed away running, we run for those people, and that really helps us have a little drive when we’re running.”
How did you get started running? “So I started running competitively in sixth grade and I started because my sister, Smita Boesch-Dining (a former standout at Concord who is now a senior on the University of Vermont cross country team) had done it before, so my parents really wanted me to try it as well. Smita was the best runner, but my mom ran in high school and college (Dartmouth) and my dad ran a little bit.”
Did you like running right away? “It took me a little bit of time because starting in sixth grade I wasn’t very good, but by eighth grade when I started getting better I started to like it more.”
How have you gotten so good? “I don’t know, just training and listening to my coach. I’ve gotten a lot better since Coach Black-Ingersoll has been my coach.”
What makes him a good coach? “He has different training strategies than other coaches. Other coaches do mostly speed workouts, but we do longer distances.”
What’s been your personal highlight of the season? “Well my favorite moment was at the Brown Invitational when I broke 16 and I ran 15:34, because my previous best time was 16:24, so that was a big jump.”
Hold on, how did that happen? “I have no idea, but that’s what happened.”
Do you guys talk about finishing second at D-I last year? Does it motivate you? “We just think that since we’re doing better this year we should be able to win states since it’s been 36 years since Concord won it or something like that (exactly like that – Concord’s last state title was in 1981).”
Do you have any pre-race routines? “I usually eat the same breakfast before every race, which is an egg sandwich. … Either I make it or my dad makes it. It’s a fried egg and it has two slices of American cheese with salt. And I have it on a cinnamon raisin bagel, which most people wouldn’t like, but I like it. It’s kind of odd.”
How did you get started running? “Both of my parents were D-I cross country runners at Tulane, so I always had a running background. I had done a few road races I did the Rock ’N Race (a 5K in Concord) in first grade. … My parents were just jogging it and I ran with my mother and I ended up running the whole thing and I remember that being a big deal that I ran the whole Rock ’N Race in first grade.”
What do you like about running cross country? “I like that you can’t just show up to a race and run perfectly, you have to work towards it and train. You can’t just go to a race and expect to run a personal record with no training. It’s all about preparing.”
Are you surprised at how good the team has been this year? “I haven’t been super surprised that we’re doing this well because going into the season we didn’t all just show up on the first day of practice and start running. Everyone had been training all summer and all year during track or during Nordic, so as much as it’s been a great surprise in some ways, it also was expected because everyone on our team is so dedicated to their craft.”
Are you extra motivated to do well at D-I after finishing second last year? “We are motivated to do well, but I think that a big part of doing well at these races is to show up and not overthink it and say, ‘Oh, it’s the state meet, now I need to go out even harder and try to sustain it.’ You can’t show up to this race going, ‘I’m going to change everything and still try to run as well.’ You need to go into his race thinking it’s just another race and I want to run fast, but I can’t overthink this and choke.”
Why did you start running? “I started in fifth grade thinking I was doing it to help me be in better shape for soccer and then eventually it got to the point where I realized I was a significantly better runner than I was a soccer player.”
When did you start to love it? “I think the tipping point was when I started to watch myself improve from year to year. Like between fifth grade and eighth grade I dropped six minutes off of my 2-mile time and I really liked that, I always thought it was crazy how I improved that much, and I like to challenge myself and see how much better I can make myself.”
What was Forest’s dad like as a coach? “I loved having him as a coach. He always pushed us as much as he could. He would always take all the kids who could keep up with the fastest kids and have us run together, so we had a group of like 20 kids in a group running together. He was really passionate and I learned a lot from him as a coach.”
Why has the Concord team been so good this year? “The commitment level is significantly greater for all the members of the team this year and last year, but this year specifically, than it was when I started as a freshman. I think that a lot of us see now that we are good and how easy it would be to fall back into not being a good team. We all push each other and we know what we’re capable of and we’ve really just committed to what we’re doing. We’ve all invested a lot of time in it and some of us have missed out on other opportunities to become better runners, but I think we’re all okay with that now since we’ve seen how far it can take us and how well we’re doing.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)