Tremendous Turnaround
September 04, 2008 10:26 AM | General
September 4, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - It was only four seasons ago when West Virginia University Cross Country Head Coach Sean Cleary was at the crossroads of rejoicing or rebuilding.
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| Sean Cleary led West Virginia to a Big East title during his first season leading the women's cross country and track programs in 2007.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Being an assistant coach at the time, Cleary and the Mountaineers were coming off a momentum-building run in the fall of 2004. WVU had won the Mid-Atlantic Regional and Cleary was awarded with his first Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year honor.
A magnificent season that boasted a two-time All-American and future Olympian in Megan Metcalfe - as well as three All-Mid-Atlantic Region athletes in Susan Davis, Jennifer Davis and Tara Struyk – was followed with a low point marked by a program forced to go into rebuilding mode.
“Boy, we hit rock bottom,” Cleary admitted. “I sat down with Coach (former coach Jeff) Huntoon and told him there was a good chance that I was leaving the year Megan Metcalfe graduated in 2005.
“We graduated six of seven girls and really hadn’t recruited many distance runners in the interim. Coach Huntoon didn’t know at that point which way he wanted to go with the program. We went from the highest point to the lowest point, and we were back to square one like how (retired coach) Marty (Pushkin) and I once recruited together to build the original program.”
With recruiting being the lifeblood to every program’s success, Cleary put forth an ambitious effort to attract some of West Virginia’s best runners and embed them into a program that had been triumphant in the past, but had fallen on hard times following the graduation of one of its best senior classes.
But with Cleary, who hails from Georgetown, Ontario, the roster would not be complete without some international flavor. As he had done in the past, Cleary never turned his back on recruiting from his home country when he took over as head coach in 2007.
“I want the best student-athlete possible and I’ve got connections up there,” Cleary said of recruiting north of the border. “Some of my close friends and high school rivals are now great coaches up in Canada.”
More importantly, the second-year coach (entering his 17th season in the program) has a passion to clearly define the term student-athlete. Besides looking for the best physical attributes of his runners, he hopes to provide his recruits with the very best in academics.
“With the cross country team we’ve built here we have fantastic students,” Cleary said. “First in the criteria I’m looking for is athletic ability. But obviously we’re looking for great students; the two go hand in hand.
“It would be much easier for me to show a Canadian that if they want be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, dentist, engineer – whatever it may be – that they can definitely take this degree and go back to Canada and be incredibly successful.”
The WVU cross country program reached its peak in 2007, winning the ultra-competitive BIG EAST championship for the first time in school history. Not to be outdone by their enormous conference feat, the Mountaineers also finished ninth in the NCAA Championships, their highest in school history.
Not only did the squad’s latest feat reflect WVU as one of the country’s most respected programs, it revealed a change in the ideology of the coaches and runners.
“To be honest, I don’t think there was a year in the program’s history that we could have realistically won the BIG EAST championships,” Cleary admitted. “Because of that, our main focus had always been the NCAA Regionals - and we could have been a third-, fourth-, fifth-place team in the BIG EAST and run very well to get that.
Cleary believes the team’s goals skyrocketed because of last season’s program-defining season.
“The NCAA region then became a very high priority to us, and we mastered that feat quite often to qualify for nationals,” Cleary said. “In that regard, what was extremely rewarding last year was winning the league title - that probably took precedence over the national finish. The NCAA regional then became the stepping stone to nationals instead of being the pinnacle of the year.”
Now the Mountaineers enter the 2008 season with a target on their back. They represent a new generation in the BIG EAST that had once been dominated by national powers Villanova and Providence, and return a still-youthful lineup that includes returning junior All-Americans Marie-Louise Asselin, Keri Bland and a host of other talented athletes ready to emerge.
“What’s interesting with this group – which is mostly comprised of freshmen, sophomores and juniors - is that we are a veteran team even though we only have one senior,” Cleary said. “I would say there are three teams, potentially four, that have a realistic shot to win the BIG EAST title.
“When I sit down with our team, we just try to worry about ourselves. They want to win and they will put themselves in the best position possible to win that title.”
Having overcome a tremendous obstacle only four seasons ago, it seems that the days of uncertainty are nearly extinct for Cleary and his top-notch program. With the ability to plug in talented runners year after year, the next step for the Mountaineers is rising to the top the national field and hoisting its first-ever NCAA Championship. Perhaps that time will come sooner rather than later.
