It is a very simple game. You have seven on your team and you must get your seven to run a course and finish faster than the other team's seven runners. One factor makes this game a little more complicated. Your competition is not limited to one other team, but could be as many as 20 other teams trying to cross that same finish line faster than your team.
It is believed that one area coach has won this game at the state level more than any coach in Missouri history. On November 6, 2010 Jesse Griffin, head Women's Cross Country coach at Lee's Summit West brought home the school's 4th consecutive Missouri State Title in Class 4 Women's Cross Country. This title is Griffin's third straight at Lee's Summit West.
Coach Griffin began coaching at Raytown South High School in 1998. In his second year, he coached that team of 8 girls(giving him only one lady on the bench) to the school's first State Championship in Women's Cross Country in Class 3. Griffin left Raytown South for Lee's Summit North to take the assistant's job in 2004 where he was part of their Class 4 State Championship that year.
In 2008, Griffin took a team that had one State Title under their belt and continued that State winning streak through this past season, giving him five State Titles as a coach with four as a head coach. He has also coached Track at all three schools for a total of 68 All State honors among 33 different All State athletes.
One of those All State runners, Alex Moase, Lee's Summit West Senior, credits Coach Griffin's success to his, "training in all weather conditions, low windchill, deep snow and ice." Senior runner Chelsey Phoebus credits Coach Griffin with her still being on the team. "I almost quit and he encouraged me to stay. " She also remembers training in a foot of snow and sliding on some black ice during a training session.
Lee's Summit West Assistant Women's coaches Christy Dabalos and Matt Turner credit the team's success to Coach Griffin's technique of varying the training according to the athlete. Dabalos comments, "he adjusts the work out according to the girl, he sees the whole person." He has attracted a variety of talent to his teams. One runner, Karen "Brocket the Rocket" Brocket also competing at the national level in mountain biking.
As a closing illustration of Coach Griffin's and his athletes' dedication to the game, on Wednesday afternoon (11/17/10) while driving in a pouring rain, this writer had to call Griffin for some last minute fact checking. Just 11 days after winning the State Title, he had his athletes out running in the rain. The training truly never ends for champions.
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