If you happened to venture to Forest Park on an early morning this summer, it would have been hard to miss the SLUH cross country team putting in miles on the trails and gearing up for what is hoped to be a successful season. 

In each of the past three years, the Jr. Bills have achieved great success in both the St. Louis area and the state of Missouri, winning their district and sectional in all three years. The team has also come tantalizingly close to a seventh state title in each of those years, finishing second in the state meet in 2018, 2019, and 2020. In all three years, SLUH has also been the highest finisher from the St. Louis area in Class 5, the highest MSHSAA classification level, beating out other top schools such as Marquette, Lafayette, and Ladue in the process. 

This high level of success is nothing new for a program that has won 26 of a possible 29 Metro Catholic Conference championships (including 17 straight), and both the runners and the coaching staff will look to finally get their hands on another state trophy at the end of this upcoming season.

The current team retains a remarkable amount of depth from the varsity squad that took home second place at the Gans Creek Cross Country course in Columbia, Mo. last year, losing only three of the seven runners to graduation. The four remaining members of that team—seniors Grant Brawley, Baker Pashea, Sean Kellogg, and Justin Glass—as well as all three alternates—juniors Wyatt Seal, Tim Greiner, and Nolan Meara—remain with the team, and are followed by another group of runners hungry to prove themselves. This experience and depth puts the Jr. Bills squarely on the shortlist of favorites to bring home a state championship in November.

For head coach Joe Porter, it is important that his runners know that, while winning a state title is a great accomplishment, it is not always an effective measuring stick for a season’s success.

“We’re trying to be right and run our best races at the end of the season, but we also want to establish a brotherhood and a community where everyone cares about everyone else,” said Porter. “Those are the things that are going to determine success, the (state) title is not something that I’m going to be talking about at all during the season.”

In comparison to last season, members of the top group of varsity runners are ahead of schedule in terms of the paces that they are hitting in workouts, much of which can be attributed to the return to summer morning runs held by coaches, which couldn’t take place for much of last year due to Covid-19 restrictions. 

This year also featured the return of the weeklong training trip that top team members take to the small northern Missouri town of Brashear, which helped to further grow the brotherhood between teammates.

“The team has been doing really well so far,” said Brawley, who is one of four team captains this year. “We’re ahead of schedule compared to this point last year. We as captains are trying to get everyone motivated to do workouts and runs, and also to try and help push the bottom guys and teach the freshmen what to do and get them involved, and just to get excited for a good season.”

This past week in particular, the resiliency of this team has already been put to the test, as the recent heat wave has forced daily practices to occur either inside the Danis Field House after school or in Forest Park before school.

“Yeah, it’s not fun for anybody,” said Porter, “We’ve had some guys come in the mornings and get in workouts, which has been an optional thing to kind of get practice out of the way. It was still hot this morning, but we went out and ran right through it.”

As for short-term goals, the focus of the varsity, JV, and freshman teams are set on upcoming meets. Freshmen and sophomores will run in their first race on Wednesday, Sept. 1, at the O’Fallon (Ill.) Futures Meet. Varsity and JV begin their racing season the following Saturday, Sept. 4, at the Granite City Invitational.