Running with the Buffaloes

by Chris Lear

  Goucher also suffered interruptions, particularly in the latter part of the season, and yet he still dominated the field. If healthy, by how much would he have won? Wetmore does not care to speculate. He says flatly,

  “He lost fitness he could have gained, but it doesn’t matter. It’s immate-rial. I don’t give a shit. He would have run the same race strategy anyway; keep the pace steady for 8k, then go. He just set them up, like Ali working somebody for eight rounds. One by one he took them to their breaking point, then he took off.”

  Wetmore feels like he has been in a fight himself. “You take the blows, it’s like a fight. Boom, boom, boom, and then you get moments of ecstasy. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t give a shit.” But he does. He lives RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

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  and breathes for this team. And through the season’s most trying time, perhaps the most trying time of his career, he helped steer them through their grief.

  Every day following Severy’s death, Wetmore did what he recom-

  mended his athlete’s do: He ran. The discipline of the distance runner, the same discipline he has adhered to daily for twenty years, is what he credits for helping Sev’s teammates and himself move forward. He says of his runners, “They’re hard. They’re hardened. Every day there’s a callousing effect when you head out and you go when you don’t want to. You don’t see it until they’re tapered. They’re smiling, happy. These aren’t the people I know. They’re so tough, calloused, and businesslike about that aspect of their life that they came back. I don’t think that’s something unique to Colorado, I think that’s something unique to distance runners. It’s hurting every day a little bit, and a little more on Saturday.”

  “In football, you might get your bell rung, but you go in with the expectation that you might get hurt, and you hope to win and come out un-scathed. As a distance runner, you know you’re going to get your bell rung. Distance runners are experts at pain, discomfort, and fear. You’re not coming away feeling good. It’s a matter of how much pain you can deal with on those days. It’s not a strategy. It’s just a callousing of the mind and body to deal with discomfort. Any serious runner bounces back.

  That’s the nature of their game. Taking pain.”

  Bouncing back. Rest assured Wetmore will take a long hard look at the faults in this year’s program when designing the plan for next year.

  The season is just over, but already Wetmore is looking ahead. Next year’s squad will be dramatically different. The best class he has ever had, along with the most dominant runner in CU history, will have graduated.

  Rival coaches need not celebrate. Wetmore feels next year’s squad may be the school’s best ever. So much for a rebuilding year. He says, “We lost five runners, but we’ve never gone into a year holding ten better people ever. We have All-Americans in Napier, Roybal, Ponce — who would’ve been an All-American if he was healthy — and Friedberg. Then there’s Valenti, Elmo, Slattery, the two Torreses, and Berkshire. Then you have walk-ons like Zach Crandall and Sean Smith. Zach was only ten seconds behind Sean on November 7th. And who knows who’s gonna come out of the woodwork? There are at least ten to twelve really good runners coming back.”

  Losing Goucher and the others in this year’s senior class will hurt. But with Goucher’s departure, Wetmore says, “This huge towering redwood that for five years gathered all the sun is gone. All these little sequoias can each grab a little sun.”

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  Epilogue

  The 1999 cross country season was a mixed bag for the Colorado cross country team. Despite the graduation of CU’s best-ever senior class, the team defended their Big 12 Championship. Ronald Roybal won the individual title, followed by freshman sensation Jorge Torres. Sean Smith not only proved to be another Friedberg, he beat Friedberg by one spot to finish fifth and earn First-Team All-Big 12 honors. The Iceberg, though, af-firmed his mettle by leading CU with his 42nd place finish at the NCAA championships. Unfortunately, the team had a rare off day at the NCAA’s, and “only” finished seventh. Arkansas, again, claimed the team title.

  As the 2000 Olympic Trials approach, CU athletes and alums are looking formidable. Adam Goucher is leading the charge. After winning NCAA’s last fall, Fila made Goucher one of the U.S.’s highest-paid distance runners by signing him to what was reported to be the most lucrative endorsement contract ever for a distance runner coming out of college. He has proved well worth the investment. He won the U.S. 4k Cross Country title in 1999 and finished 11th in the World Cross Country Championships. He followed that performance with a victory at the U.S. Indoor Track and Field Championships in the 3000 meters before pulling his biggest coup by beating perennial U.S. champion Bob Kennedy for the 5000 meter title at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships. He subsequently ran 13:11 for 5000 meters in Zurich, Switzer-land, making him the third fastest American of all-time. He finished his eventful year with his first trip to the World Track and Field Championships, where he made the final of the 5000 meters and finished 11th.

  This fall Goucher not only defended his U.S. 4k Cross Country title, but he also came back the next day to defeat ex-teammate Alan Culpepper to add the 12k title to his collection. Unfortunately, an acute case of Achilles tendonitis sidelined him for both the World Cross Country Championships and the majority of the indoor campaign, and it even threatened his outdoor season. He has apparently righted the problem, and he appears on track to make the team to Sydney at the Olympic Trials in Sacramento in July.

  Adam Batliner and Tom Reese hope to join Goucher in Sacramento.

  Batliner is eking out a living as a professional — he is currently sponsored by Saucony — and is on the verge of qualifying for the Olympic Trials in RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES

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  the 5000 meters. Reese, who parlayed his internship into a position in sports marketing with Saucony, is also trying to qualify for the Trials in the 5000 meters. If Reese and Batliner make it, expect to see them sport-ing Village Coffee Shop T-shirts along with their Saucony gear, for the Village is sponsoring them as well.

  Ronald Roybal will join them on the starting line in Sacramento. At Stanford in May 2000, he ran a PR 13:42 for 5000 meters. The performance qualified Roybal for the Olympic Trials.

  Jorge Torres finished right behind Roybal at the Stanford Invite, also clocking 13:42. The time broke Adam Goucher’s University of Colorado freshman record. It has been a long year for Jorge, though, so he will skip the Trials to gain strength for next year, when he hopes to lead the Buffaloes with his twin brother Ed.

  Brock Tessman may be in Sacramento as well. Innumerable high-

  mileage weeks in Boulder through the winter and early spring have given him a tremendous base, and his early results indicate he is on pace to be a Trials qualifier in either the 1500 or 5000 meters.

  When they have finished racing they will be cheering for Steve Slattery, who will be running the steeplechase at the Olympic Trials. Slattery recently broke Tom Reese’s older brother Dan’s school record in the steeplechase with an 8:35 at the Penn Relays.

  When Slattery finishes and looks into the stands for Wetmore, he is likely to see Jay Johnson, who could be scouting recruits for his own program. Johnson was recently named head track coach at Pratt Community College in Pratt, Kansas.

  Matt Elmuccio, Slattery’s New Jersey nemesis, may be following Slattery’s exploits as well — from afar. Elmuccio redshirted this spring and reportedly transferred to Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

  Oscar Ponce will probably be there as well to cheer on his teammates. Again felled by stress fractures in his shins, he did not get his All-American certificate. But, this spring, he ran 29:35 for 10,000 meters. The mark places him sixth on the all-time CU list. More important, he
earned his degree in Spanish literature. He intends to start graduate work toward his masters in the fall.

  Back in Colorado, Matt Napier will be getting results on the Internet as he starts an engineering career with Hewlett Packard in Fort Collins. That is, of course, if Napier is not attending to the birth of his third child.

  Even if he is not covering the Olympic Trials for a local newspaper, 2000 journalism graduate Wes Berkshire will be closely following his teammates. A member of the all-nobody team coming out of high school, 256

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  Wes rebounded from a disastrous fall, where he was just fried after running 130 mile weeks, to run a huge PR of 14:31 for 5000 meters in his final collegiate season.

  Aaron Blondeau may also be covering the Olympic Trials, although probably from a website of his own. The computer science major will not be running there because he continues to be inexplicably injury-prone.

  A 13:51 5000 meter performance in the spring of 1999 offered a tantalizing glimpse of how formidable he will be if he can solve his injury woes.

  With Wetmore at the helm, and the Torres twins, Friedberg, Blon deau, Slattery, and Smith leading the charge, the future is bright for Colorado.

  A bumper crop of Colorado-only recruits will join them, and when they line up for the Big 12 Cross Country Championships in Boulder next fall, another Severy may be toeing the line. Chris’s brother Jonathan will be a freshman for the Buffaloes in the fall of 2000. But even if Jonathan is not on the line, Chris will be. A tree was planted and dedicated in his memory on the Buffalo Ranch. Now Sev will always be there to watch over the Buffaloes.

  Chris Lear

  May 2000

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  Afterword

  It’s hard to believe it’s been almost five years since I moved to Boulder to spend the 1998 cross country season with the Colorado Buffaloes. While so much has happened in the intervening years that it sometimes feels like a lifetime ago, the memories of the unforgettable 1998 campaign remain as vivid as if they happened yesterday.

  When I set out to write Running with the Buffaloes, I did so without a publisher’s contract, and without any certainty the manuscript would ever see the light of day. I suppose you could say that in undertaking the creation of this book I was living in an Edge City of my own, paralleling the journey of the 1998 Buffaloes.

  The men in this book were my first critics. They read it when it was nothing more than a rubber-band bound manuscript. I met the guys for breakfast one morning at the Village a short while after they had had a chance to read it. When they uniformly told me that I’d captured the experience, my journey, in a sense, was complete.

  Finding a publisher, though, was easier said than done. Fortunately, after an odyssey that included self-publishing the book, it found a home with Lyons Press. And, to my elation, in the intervening years I’ve heard from many of you who have been touched by the Buffaloes’ tale. I can only hope that the story of Chris Severy, Adam Goucher, and the rest of the men herein will inspire a new generation of readers in years to come.

  Inevitably, when readers speak to me about Running with the Buffaloes, they ask where the members of the 1998 team are now. It will come as no surprise that while competitive running continues to play a prominent role in the lives of many on that team, it is but a memory for others. Here then, is an update on lives of the central characters of the 1998 team.

  Mark Wetmore continues to coach the Buffaloes. Since Goucher

  won the NCAA crown in 1998 Wetmore has had four other NCAA

  champions. Kara Grgas-Wheeler (now Kara Goucher) won the 2000

  NCAA Cross Country Championship to lead the CU women to their

  first NCAA title. One year later, the CU men edged Stanford by a point to win their first NCAA title. With that, Wetmore made history as the first coach to capture all four NCAA cross country titles—men’s and women’s team and individual championships.

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  Then, this past fall, at the 2002 NCAA Cross Country Champi-

  onships in Terre Haute, Indiana, Jorge Torres became the first American since Goucher to win the individual title. His twin, Edwardo, finished tenth, making them the best-ever siblings at the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

  Steve Slattery concluded a spectacular CU career in Terre Haute.

  Weakened by mononucleosis, he finished sixty-third, but he departed CU with the school record in the steeplechase—8:23. He earned that time at the 2002 USA Track and Field Championships, where he finished second. Now engaged to CU standout Sara Gorton and running for Nike, Slattery hopes to represent the United States at the 2004

  Olympics in Athens.

  Four years ago, it seemed as if Adam Goucher was destined for

  greatness. When healthy he has been great, but for the past two years that has proved elusive. Though he made the 2000 Olympic final and 2001 World Championship final in the 5000—the only American to do so—he did so while training sporadically because of a wide variety of ailments. Thankfully, in November 2002, Goucher had surgery for a sports hernia; an injury his doctor believes was at the root of all his ailments. He has trained uninterrupted since then, and he’s cautiously optimistic that he’ll regain the form that made him such a magnificent world-class prospect just two years ago. “This year may not be as stellar as I’d like it to be,” he says, “but it’s my stepping-stone heading into the Olympic year.

  I may not run sub-13 (for 5000 meters) this year, because I haven’t had the consistency in my training to back that up, but I think it’s going to be a very good year.”

  Jason Drake is now the head cross country coach and assistant track coach at Washington State University. Assisting JD in Pullman is none other than Mike Friedberg. After concluding his collegiate career as a three-time All-America in cross country, Friedberg decided to hang ’em up. He’s now taking dead aim at developing a few Mike Friedbergs of his own in years to come.

  JD’s departure opened the door for Jay Johnson’s return. After two years as the head coach at Pratt Community College in Pratt, Kansas, Johnson returned to his alma mater in the fall of 2002 to serve as assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for the Buffaloes.

  Upon his return to Boulder, Johnson was pleased to discover that he had some good bloodlines to work with. Among his charges are freshman Payton Batliner, Adam Batliner’s cousin, and junior Jonathan Severy, Chris Severy’s younger brother. Both were varsity members of CU’s third-place cross country team at the 2002 NCAA cham pionships.

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  While Johnson is no longer competing, Adam Batliner is still getting after it. He’s “living the dream,” working at a shoe store in Boulder, painting, and running, and he’s making a name for himself in all of his endeavors. Batliner’s artwork now shows in galleries across Boulder, and last spring he joined Slattery in the final of the USA Championships in the steeplechase, finishing twelfth.

  Among Batliner’s housemates is Tom Reese. Unfortunately, Reese’s knee troubles have only grown more debilitating since his graduation.

  Though he still harbors running ambitions, he has quickly established a reputation as a top realtor in the Boulder area. He hopes to open a real estate agency of his own in the not-so-distant future.

  Brock Tessman is now an instructor in the political science department at CU and on track to earn his PhD in political science in the coming year. He’s continued to run, and hopes to lower his 13:58 5000 PR

  and qualify for the Olympic Trials in 2004.

  Wes Berkshire is returning to Colorado after several blissful years as a ski bum in Lak
e Tahoe and New Zealand.

  Oscar Ponce recently returned to Colorado after several years in Oregon. He’s pursuing a master’s degree in counseling psychology for public education at CU-Denver and assisting the Denver North cross country and track teams. He aspires to coach track and be a guidance counselor at an inner-city school.

  Ponce’s partner in crime, Ron Roybal, is living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and working as a homeopathic sales representative. Though chronic foot problems curtailed his running career, he’s embarking on the next phase of his life with vigor equal to what he displayed on the track and trails at CU.

  One day, these men will have families of their own. No doubt, at that time, they’ll seek child-rearing advice from Matt Napier. Napier now works as an engineer at the Sandia National Laboratories and lives in Albuquerque with his wife and four children.

  So there you have it. Though they’ve followed unique and diverse paths since the 1998 season, all are well. Though not as close as they once were, each knows that the brotherhood that binds them will always exist, much like the memory of their brother, Christopher Severy.

  Chris Lear

  May 2003

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  About the Author

  CHRIS LEAR is the author of Sub 4:00:

  Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest

  Mile. New Jersey’s fastest high-school

  miler of the 1990s, he went on to grad-

  uate from Princeton University, where

  he earned All-Ivy, All-East, and All-

  America honors, and was a two-time

  cross-country captain. He lives in Boul-