Q & A with Spider Thrower…Monica Howard

Monica Howard is a thrower for the Spiders Indoor and Outdoor Track & Field teams where she competes in the Weight Throw and Shot Put during the indoor season and the Discus, Javelin, Hammer and Shot Put during the outdoor season. With the discus as her primary event, Howard a Wilmington, Ohio native also picked up the javelin throw her freshman year where she was crowned the league champion and earned a spot at the NCAA East Regional Championships hosted by the University of Florida. Along with holding the program record in the discus, she was named the Spiders' Most Outstanding Rookie Field Performer during the 2008 outdoor season.

We had the opportunity to ask Monica a few questions recently:

Question: You are coming off surgery this fall. What was the nature of your injury and how have you felt during your rehab?

Howard: Initially they thought that my ACL was torn but I found out that my ACL is just smaller then it should be. So instead of ACL surgery I had scar tissue removed from the knee surgery I had my senior year of high school. As far as rehab was concerned I felt like it went really well, I fell like I am back to 100%.

Question: Originally from Wilmington, Ohio, what drew you to be part of the Spiders program?

Howard: Well if you have ever been to Ohio you know that there isn’t much there, so when I was searching for colleges I was only looking outside of Ohio. Richmond actually found me though, I didn’t find it, I actually had never heard of Richmond until I talked to Coach Jones who recruited me. Once I came on my visit I really like the environment so I decided that Richmond was the place for me.

Question: What will you focus on the most in training as we head into the indoor and outdoor seasons?

Howard: Footwork and technique is always important, you can never be too good with footwork and technique.

Question: What is the strongest part of your technique in the discus that you feel can help take you to the next level?

Howard: I am quick in the ring, and since I am a small thrower it’s an advantage.

Question: What exercises do you practice the most in the weight room that helps you the most in your event? Do you incorporate any ply-o-metric exercises?

Howard: All of our workouts are designed for whatever event or events we specialize in so our whole workout is important. Yes we have a specific day specifically for ply-o-metrics.
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Question: Considering the time you have to wait for the outdoor season to arrive, what do you focus on during the indoor season to prepare yourself for your event?

Howard: Outdoor is really what I look forward too, so during indoor season I try and focus on footwork and technique because no matter what event those two things are important. As for my outdoor events, we have practices where we work on outdoor events.

Question: Do you pay close attention to your competitors within your conference and on the national scene?

Howard: No, I don’t really like to know where I stand because I feel like that adds pressure. The only person I like to watch nationally is my sister; I like to see how she is doing.

Question: Who are some of the most influential people in your life and what is some of the best advice that they have given you?

Howard: My track coaches in high school were really influential in my track career and my sister because if it wasn’t for her I would never have started throwing in the first place. Also my parents for sharing their athletic genes with me…

Chapter 30: The SMHS 50 Yard Line “Park”

(The photo above as it appears in the 1983 SMHS Yearbook--Page #170.)

A Story of Loyal Friends...Growing Up in a Small Town

(Tom “stickman” Hill arrived into Richmond today prompting me to post this story...)

Back in high school we tended to have good clean fun. Many people would ask how you define good, clean fun. Everyone has their own definition. This next chapter will explain how a handful of my close friends and I defined small town “fun” when we were growing up. I want to stress that in all our years we never did anything to destroy property of others. Our actions would be more than just frowned upon these days and frankly would not be acceptable nearly anywhere. For us, it’s just the way it was. This particular story goes back a lot of years and shows how good friends handle things and shows the level of trust I have in these men to this day…nearly 30 years later. Thankfully, we got this sort of thing out of our system a few years ago.

Cross Country Begins at SMHS

In our hometown of St. Marys, West Virginia in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s there were only a couple thousand people in our entire county of Pleasants…and our high school (St. Marys High School) had less than 400 total students in grades 9-12. The West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission (WVSSAC) grouped high schools based on the number of students within the school. Most sports within the state use the A, AA, AAA classification. We were placed into group “A”, the smallest classification. Even though we were a small, class “A” school we competed against the largest schools (class AAA) within the state during the cross country season. Back then, there was only one classification in our state for the high school cross country championships (AAA). We always felt like underdogs as a class “A” school and always felt we had to earn and fight for everything we achieved against the bigger, class AAA teams. Those roots still run through my blood as a coach and I still love slaying the megalithic.

SMHS started a cross country team my freshman year of school (1979). Our high school track & field coach, Jerry Rea asked me and a handful of my cousins during the summer of ’79 if we were going to run cross country that fall. It was a new sport to our town and my cousin asked, “What’s cross country?” I had no idea. Actually none of us had any idea what cross country was. Coach Rea replied, “Well, you run through fields and creeks and jump logs and that sort of thing.” As we stood there on the high school steps leading into the hallway next to the gymnasium we just looked at each other. Then we nodded that “yes” we would run and concluded that this ‘cross country’ thing sounded like what we did practically every day anyway. Coach Rea is a man of few words and as he left us standing there in front of the school we began to talk with excitement about this new sport to our school.

Summer Running

During my four years of high school, SMHS jumped in to the sport with great success for a school of our size. The first year we even had a cross country program our team placed second at the state championships…Again, in the AAA division. As we all moved through the years our cross country season officially started in early August, but a group of us would meet in our hometown on Rt 2, the road next to our high school, every afternoon at 5:00PM during the summer months to train and prepare for the fall season. It was not mandated by our coach…There was no fixed training schedule…No one forced us to do it. No one called us to make sure we were there to run at 5:00PM. It was just expected by each of us and what we wanted to do. It was as regular part of our day as getting out of bed each morning. For me, my brothers and my cousins (Rob and Jim), we would work on my dad’s sawmill from 7:00AM until 4:00PM and head home to change out of our work clothes for our afternoon run. By the time I reached high school age my 4 brothers (Mike, Cliff, Matt and Vernon) had all graduated and had state championships titles to their credit. They all 4 ran a bit following high school...only Mike and Cliff continued to run in the years following. They both coach at SMHS today.

Back in those days we had a hard core group that met daily. The group included my brothers Mike and Cliff…my cousin Larry, our good friends Lee Haddox… Tom “stickman” Hill…Don “Beets” Harding...and in the later years Danny DeMoss, Gerald Bookman and Doyle Monday joined us. We’d even have runners from across the state and other schools like Mark Nichols (Elkins HS), Denny Love (Charleston area), Jeff Hammons (University of Wisconsin) who is the nephew of Randy Hammons of Kings Redge and the Sarver brothers (Joe and Roger) from Marietta, OH stop in to run with us. Mark Nichol’s grandmother lived in Belmont; the town next to St. Marys and he moved to live with her for the summer of 1981 for the sole purpose training with us. In an age before cell phones and the internet it was not uncommon to have a group of 8-10 people meeting on any given day of the week in our small town.

We trained hard and treated every day as an opportunity to prove something and to improve ourselves. At the time we didn’t know or understand what it was we were trying to prove and we certainly did not understand training or the physiology behind it, but rest assured every run ended in a race back to the high school. One day it would be the last mile of the run and the next it was the last 800M. Every day someone would push the issue (i.e.- the pace)…every day someone felt good…everyday someone in the group felt they could prove they had the stronger will. Everyday someone was right and someone was wrong. It was simple, uncomplicated and pure to its heart.

St. Marys sits on the banks of the Ohio River within the rolling hills of West “By God” Virginia. It’s not western Virginia as some outsiders that do not understand our state might want to call us. Its beautiful country and I recall the sun setting on the Ohio side of the river and the views we would get from running the “old pike” which is a mile long hill that winds its way from downtown St. Marys uphill to Rt. 16 before we would hang a right and head down “Shadow Hill” back into town. Those views of the Ohio River and those crimson red sunsets are etched in my memory.

The Smoking Area at SMHS

Sometime in September of 1982 our school administration decided to make some improvements to the grounds around our high school. There were some students and teachers that liked to have a cigarette or otherwise a smoke-break during school hours. They were allowed to have their smoke-break as long as they stayed in the designated area next to the bleachers. This didn’t work out because some people in the smoking group started slipping under the bleachers out of view of school officials. That’s when the administration decided to move the smoking area to a more open position on school grounds. Someone within the school decided to purchase 5 concrete benches and a couple of trash cans to place within the newly designated smoking-area, which was under a light tower on school property. The light tower was actually an old oil rig derrick that was used at the turn of the century for drilling natural gas and oil wells within our county. The central and southern parts of West Virginia have coal while our county to this day has oil and gas. After SMHS was built and the oil derricks were abandoned they were converted to light towers and placed at the high school for lighting the football field. The oil derrick I write about has since been taken down but 4 remain at the football field giving our stadium distinct character, which I like. Again, this area was designated the new “smoking area” for students and faculty and was located right outside, at the time, the Vocational Agriculture/FFA and the Band Rooms. In addition to the newly designed smoking area, our school also planted 4 nice, new trees in the area outside of the gymnasium where buses pick-up and drop-off students. The trees were small maples about 7 feet in height.

This was big news in our school and the majority of our cross country team didn’t think it was right or a good idea. Our school was basically promoting smoking in our eyes by providing this “official” smoking area. A few of us cross country runners were also members of the FFA and we would sometimes get the 2^nd hand smoke as it came through the windows of our classroom. It was simply change and we didn’t care for it.

The 1981 & 1982 Seasons

As the 1982 cross country season began our weeks were filled with hard workouts held in the Pleasants County Park, our one and only County Park. Our school was coming off several consecutive successful spring track season where we won the class A-AA state team title numerous times for the boys. As a junior I captured a few individual high school state titles…AAA XC, the A-AA 1600M, 3200M and 4x800 Relay. During the 1980 fall cross country season, my sophomore year; we placed 3 runners (Lee Haddox-3^rd, Me-5^th, Tom Hill-7^th) in the top 10 in the class AAA cross country championships. Then during my junior year Tom Hill and I finished in the top 5 in XC with me narrowly claiming the state title in a race that I rank as one of the most painful in my career, but that’s another story. No other school matched our 1980 XC performance… unfortunately, we did not have a team qualified…only our three individuals.

Coach Rea was a great coach and as inducted into the Mid Ohio Valley Sports Hall-of-Fame a couple years ago. He had us train in the park most nights. It’s a hilly place with lots of steep up and down hills. We ran “figure 8’s” on a 1.1 mile loop that offered very few flat spots. On the rare occasion we would head to “Middle Island” for a flat run. The Ingram family owned Middle Island, a 2.2 mile long stretch of land at the convergence of the Ohio River and Middle Island Creek and they allowed us to run there. We were fortunate that they let us have free reign of the island for running. It’s a great place and is now a wildlife refuge filled with trails throughout. Every time I go home to visit I go for a run on Middle Island.

I was coming off an undefeated junior season within WV and Ohio and a win at the Kinney Northeast Regional Championships at Van Cortlandt Park in NYC and a 7^th place finish at Kinney (now Foot Locker) National XC Championships in Orlando, FL. As our season moved into October our team was on fire having a lot of success defeating the “AAA” schools we faced each weekend. Each weekend we traveled to an invitational somewhere in West Virginia or Ohio. We raced hard and then listened to the “Sugar Hill Gang” and the first mainstream rap song (Rappers Delight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diiL9bqvalo) on 8 tract tape on the way home as we planned our Saturday night. We had the song memorized from the year before and to this day me and my cousin Rob can break into the tune at will. We did the same thing nearly every weekend following our meets…We’d pile and cram 7-8 of us into a vehicle…usually my brother Cliff’s green CJ-7 Jeep and then drive 25 miles to Parkersburg to go bowling at Emerson Lanes or to grab a pizza at Pizza Hut... The typical crew on Saturday night included me and my first cousins Rob and Jim, relative John “hair head” Hashman, Lee Haddox, Jennings Illar, Tom Hill and Don Harding.

Bowling on the Big Night

We went bowling at Emerson Lanes on Saturday, October 23, 1982 after a meet at John Marshall High School in Moundsville, WV. It was a night to bring our old team back together. The night was typical and filled with a lot of laughs and reminiscing. Tom Hill…Hillba, Rudy or Stickman as everyone knew him…was always funny and made you laugh. I weighed 120 pounds at the time and “stickman” certainly seemed a lot smaller than me. He got his name because he looked like the stick people you draw when you’re 8 years old. I don’t think the man could have weighed more than 112 pounds. He was a hell of a runner and is still on the top 10 All-Time List for the 3200M in WV. Don Harding was a little more serious but always poking fun. He’d get riled up making us chuckle along the way. Get him and Mike Cunningham together and oh my goodness what a riot.

We laughed and laughed but throughout the night our conversation came back to the new smoking area at SMHS and to the idea that our football team was getting all the headlines. We all grumbled to each other as normal kids do. We were getting ourselves all worked up. It wasn’t directed towards our friends and classmates or a specific sport, but towards the people in charge making these decisions. After all, we were in high school and thought we knew just about everything….Read in my sarcasm. First we’d grumble about the benches and the trash cans…and then about the smoke...and then to the pictures of 3^rd Team All-State players who were getting their photo on the wall at our high school. In our minds 3^rd team All-State was like getting 3^rd place in an event at the state track championships. In track you had to win a state title to get your photo on the wall. In our minds it wasn’t fair and we weren’t getting a fare shake. Again, we were in high school and thought we knew just about everything.

Defining “hood-la-mize-ing” and the Hoodlamizing Club

As we finished our 2^nd game of bowling at $1 per game we decided to head for St. Marys. We had a long run the next morning so when we got to the high school where we started our car pool for the trip to Emerson Lanes everyone headed their separate way. That is except for me, Tom Hill and Don Harding. We were still standing there talking when I said, “Man, I just don’t feel like going home yet.” Both Stickman and Beets looked at me and said, “Well, what do you want to do?” I had no idea. I just knew that it was 10:30PM on Saturday night and I didn’t want to go home. That’s when one of them said, “You want to do some ‘hood-la-mize-ing’ for old time sake or what?”

You see Stickman was the master. He would come up with ideas that just can’t be explained. His brain worked in a way like no one else I’ve ever met in my lifetime. He would come up with these ideas he termed “hood-la-mize-ing”. The rules for hoodlamizing were simple: a) come up with a unique idea to make a noticeable point… b) destroy no one’s property outside of pumpkins at Halloween… c) never steal someone’s property…d) never ever, ever get caught….and e) and most important… do not breath a word to anyone else... take it to your grave…tell no one. We knew Coach Rea would kick us off the cross country/track teams with no questions asked if we’d ever got caught...Then we’d also have to face our parents…No way… getting caught was not an option!

There were 3 of us in this private little club of fun that we called “hood-la-mize-ing”. Once in a while my brother Cliff would join us. I watched in amazement one night as he climbed a field goal post while holding a car tire in one hand. He climbed to the very top of the field goal post lifted the tire over the goal post upright…Let it drop onto his hands…kicked his butt out letting the tire drop….slid back down the goal post upright and moved the tire to the middle of the goal post. To our amazement when we saw this we told him he could never do that again. He replied, “Sure I can.” Then he proceeded to do it again with another tire repeating the process. To this day I wonder how someone got those steel-belted tires off the goal post….As Don Harding said this week, “Probably the greatest feat of shear strength I've ever seen even today!!!” Thankfully it was not in football season… Also, Mike Cunningham, Matt Bailey and JB Abbott joined in on some of the great pumpkin smashes each Halloween. The good stuff though…The genius that was hoodlamizing usually started with an idea from our Stickman.

The Making of a Park

At 10:00PM on weekends the 1 city policeman on duty in St. Marys would come to the high school to lock the 2 gates that allowed entrance to the school property. We’d scoped it out plenty of times. We knew the loop the 1 policeman on duty drove on his rounds and we knew when the neighbors around the school came home. We scouted it out…we were thorough. As we stood there outside of SMHS, Stickman, Beets and I talked about what kind of hoodlamizing we could do. It needed to be original…It couldn’t be just any old thing…It needed to have some bite to it while not damaging property. As we bounced ideas back and forth we came up with it. It was genius in our minds…Genius on so many levels we thought.

Here’s how we saw it: The high school administration decided a few weeks before to make a new smoking area and plant some trees at the school. The trouble was the benches and trash cans they placed in the smoking area under the big light tower just didn’t go with the asphalt surroundings….And the maple trees they planted just did not go in the little squares holes within the concrete sidewalk next to the school. No...No…No…We concluded then and there this was ALL wrong. This mess just didn’t feel or look right. We could right this wrong and we would do so on this cool October night.

Let’s see we thought…the smoking section was too close to the school…The maple trees needed more space to grow….It was simply wrong. Then it hit us. It smacked us in the forehead like we were shot with a diamond bullet. It was crystal clear. The high school football team was losing class A games, but still getting all the headlines while XC was winning class AAA invitational’s…The smokers within the school were stuck under this big light tower. Nope, this was no good. Our smokers needed their own PARK. Yep, they should have a park where they could sit down and smoke with green grass and plenty of open space. That’s when we decided to turn our football field into a park for the smokers. It wouldn’t hurt anyone and yet it would get the smokers further away from the school…They would be in the middle of the football field where the administration could keep an eye on them. Plus it would make another unspoken point at the same time. We’d take a trash can and the benches out to the 50 yard line and set them up in park-like fashion. It was settled.

Getting Started and the Park Design

We realized a couple years earlier that even when the chain link gates to the school were closed and chained they were not always locked. Sometimes our 1 city policeman would close the gates and make the chain and its lock look like they were locked. Upon closer inspection you would find the chain was just looped back on itself and the lock not fastened. On this night (October 23, 1982) the gate was locked, so we had no fear of anyone driving through the school and seeing us….perfect

Even with the gates locked, the one on the North end of the school had space under it that we could lay down on the asphalt and crawl underneath. Next to this gate was a large green building with a large set of sliding doors (This green building is no longer there…long since torn down and replaced with a red brick Vo-Ag/FFA Building.). It was the maintenance building and was always locked….On the school grounds there were two night lights…one on the north end of the football field connected to a large light tower…and the other was on the south end of the football field next to the football concession stand. The point…The 50 yard line of the football was prime real-estate for a new park to be built under the cover of darkness.

The Benches and the Trash Can

We moved our cars to a back alley near Sam White’s house so they were not near the school. Sam was the local judge. Two of his son’s were good basketball players for SMHS and Stickman and Beets knew them both. After parking our cars we stripped off our bright shirts and replaced them with black ones. I always grabbed a dark shirt when we went out, knowing it might be needed later. If you hoodlamize in a white shirt you’re asking to get caught.

After changing shirts we quietly and stealth-fully proceeded to the high school gate. We rolled under the gate and went right into action. We grabbed a trash can and carried it out to the 50 yard line of the football field and surveyed the area. We went back to the smoking area and grabbed a concrete bench. We thought these benches would weigh 100 pounds or so. Wrong!! These concrete benches were straight up heavy. I could stack 6X9 railroad ties on the sawmill and these benches had to weigh 250-300 pounds. We all three grabbed one bench and toted it out to the 50 yard line. Then we laughed our way back to get another bench. After the third bench we sat down on them to get a feel for our new park. We sat there for a few minutes but our Park just did not look or feel right. Something was definitely missing!

The Missing Piece to the New Park

Again we looked at each other knowing this was not good enough. Come Monday morning a couple of people would have the benches back in place in minutes. Nope this just didn’t have the bite we were looking for. That’s when we realized what our little park needed. Call it, in modern terms…going green. Our park on the 50 yard line of the football field needed……..a …………..TREE. Yes, it needed a maple tree. That would top off our park design nicely.

Making a Pact and our Trust in Each Other

In order to plant a 7 foot tall maple tree we were going to need to dig a big hole. The root ball on a tree of that size is nearly 3 feet in diameter…That’s a large hole when you have nothing to dig with. We knew if we took this step and planted this tree we had to say nothing to no one. It would be very, very bad if anyone found out. We looked each other in the eye and made a pact that we would say nothing until all three of us agreed it was OK. I contacted Tom Hill, who is now an Assistant Director of Athletics at Baylor University and Don Harding who works in the Preston County, WV Board of Education Office and we agreed that 29 years is long enough and that the statute of limitations has passed on our little prank. I trusted these men then and to this day would do anything for them. 29 years and they have kept our hoodlamizing story quiet. We each knew the three of us could trust each other to stay quiet and we each knew what we stood to lose if anyone found out it was us. To this day they are true and loyal friends and have said nothing of these adventures. Loyal friends, as you know, do not come along often.

Digging the Hole

With the decision to plant the tree on the 50 yard line of the football field we moved into gear. The next thing we did was get the maple tree. We went over to where they had been planted a few weeks before. The first one we grabbed was too big. We tried to pull it out of the ground with no luck. The second tree was not quite as big and with some digging through the mulch with our hands we got enough of it out of the way to pull the entire tree and burlap covered root ball out of the ground. The major concern here was the night light. The trees were located next to the school near one of the night lights. We were in trouble if someone drove by on the side street and looked into the school area. We moved quickly and pulled the maple tree out of the ground and out to the 50 yard line.

As we stood there laughing we realized we had no way to dig a hole big enough. We looked under the bleachers and found nothing...We went over by the concession stand and found nothing we could use to dig with. Finally one of us looked toward the old green maintenance building down by the gate (It’s now a red brick Vo-Ag/FFA Building.). We went over to it but it was locked. We soon realized that we could push the sliding door outward and slide behind it. There were probably only a handful of people in the school small enough to slide behind the door. Regardless, it was a tight fit but we slid inside looking for a digging device. It was pitch dark and we didn’t dare turn on a light. All we could do was feel-around with our hands in the dark. We found nothing except 3 short pieces of angle iron, each about two feet long. Angle iron is a piece of metal “L” shaped and roughly 3 inches wide on each side of the “L”. We realized this wasn’t great but it would have to do.

11:20PM

At 11:20PM we slid out of the green building and eased back to our 50 yard line park. We got down on our knees and started digging. Stickman, Beets and I worked in silence. We were on a mission…We’d made a decision to do this and moved into action. The deeper we dug the harder the earth got. We dug with the angle iron to loosen the dirt and then we would pull the dirt out of the hole with our hands and a coffee can we found in the green building. We dug and dug and dug some more. This was no different than a long workout we thought. We worked in silence…getting the job done. Finally at 1:30AM we decided the hole was big enough. Our knees hurt…Our backs hurt…Our hands hurt from digging…Our finger nails were worn down to the quick. We slid the tree into the hole and it was nearly a perfect fit. Then we placed some dirt around the burlap sack covering the root ball. Tapped the dirt down with our angle iron making sure we left not foot prints…and no hand prints. Then we sat down on the concrete benches and admired our work. Yes, we concluded, this was the perfect park for the football field.

The Angle Iron

The way we had it figured the angle iron was the only thing connecting us to the digging. As we left I asked Tom and Don to give me the angle iron. I told them I would make it disappear. We got into our respective cars and each headed home anxious for Monday to arrive for news of our new park and to see who would take credit for…in our minds…our masterpiece.

As I headed north on Rt. 2 towards my home on Mt Carmel Ridge I crossed the Middle Island Creek Bridge. I stopped my parent’s car on the bridge and quickly tossed the angle iron over the edge into the Middle Island Creek below. Middle Island Creek is more like a river at this point so there was no fear of anyone ever seeing the angle iron again.

School Monday

On Monday, a day and a half later I arrived at school nervous and anxious. What would happen? Stickman, Beets and I made a pact and our pact of silence was in place. We would tell no one. Heck we’d hoodlamized numerous times over the years and no one ever suspected us. This would be no different. Someone else would take credit for it. Why were we confident of this? Someone else always took credit for it…and that was just fine with us.

Robbie Prim, the Hurdles and his 3 days of Vacation

We were confident because we remembered the time we set the hurdles up on the school roof. Our coach required our hurdlers to carry the hurdles into the locker room each Friday after practice for fear something would happen to the hurdles if they were left out over the weekend. On this particular weekend we were in the mood to do something and we knew the hurdles had been left out…again. Actually this made 2 weeks in a row they had been left out. We felt obligated to confirm our coach’s fear. So, we carried each hurdle up the outside stairs that serves as a fire escape for the 2^nd floor of SMHS next to the Chemistry room (Back then these stairs were just outside Ms. Barnhart’s room. Ooooh yea...We boys liked her class a lot and it wasn’t because we liked Chemistry.). Near the top of the stairs you could, with little effort, step over onto the roof of the school. The cool thing about this roof was that when you were in a room on the 2^nd floor on the northeast side of our school you could look out any window onto this roof. So we carried the hurdles up these stairs onto the roof…hurdle after hurdle. Then we set them up as if someone planned to hold hurdle practice on the roof of our school. We knew Coach Rea would be very upset and consequently our hurdlers would have some extra running and bear crawls on Monday.

On the Monday morning following our setting up of the hurdles on the roof, I sat in my homeroom wanting to look out the window. I couldn’t be the one that discovered the hurdles…someone would surely know it was me if I spotted them first. So, I sat there waiting for someone to look out our homeroom window. As I talked to Richard Steele, who sat in front of me in homeroom, I noticed he was looking towards the window. He then stood up and started laughing pointing towards the roof mentioning the hurdles. I never even got out of my seat…I looked like little Billy in the movie “Christmas Story” when they challenged their friend to stick his tongue to the flag pole and the teacher asked Billy where his friend Flick was…. “Flick...Flick who?” he responded. Anyone paying attention would have thought it odd that I just sat there looking at the chalk board. Eventually I joined in the laughter and people started speculating who had done it. Oh it was funny to everyone and I laughed along. It was a good way to start a Monday.

Later in the day I ran into Tom Hill in the hallway. He came up and asked me, “Did you hear?” “Hear what” I asked? “They caught the person that put the hurdles on the roof”, he said. I was confused as I looked at him. He was looking at me with a more serious face than I was used to seeing. I started feeling the pit in my stomach as he continued, “All day Robbie Prim has been bragging about putting the hurdles up there”, he said. I looked at Tom as we started to laugh. We knew someone would claim credit which is one of the things we got the biggest chuckle out of. Stickman continued, “Yea, I think he’s in trouble.” “Mr. Smith (our principle) just pulled him out of class”, he said. Later that same day we found out Robbie Prim got 3 days out of school suspension for telling people he set the hurdles up on the roof and then subsequently lying to Mr. Smith that he didn’t do it. He went around school claiming credit for something that he did not do and then when Mr. Smith called him on it he denied being the guilty person which Mr. Smith did not believe. His denying it to Mr. Smith made our principle mad and led him to give Robbie 3 days out of school suspension. We really felt bad that he got 3 days suspension for something he did not do, but we always thought he should have never taken credit for something he did not do in the first place. We did think it ironic that he got 3 days suspension for actually telling Mr. Smith the truth…because Robbie really did not do it.

23 Years After the 50 Yard Line Park

Amazingly, no one within SMHS took credit for planting the tree and making the park in the days, weeks and months that followed. It was presumed that folks from Frontier HS, our rivals across the Ohio River, had snuck into town and done the deed. The folks from the yearbook did take a photo of our park before it was dismantled. The photo made our 1983 SMHS yearbook (page #170--see photo top of this story). Tom, Don and I still laugh about it today. A few people outside of our little group know the real story. Tom, Don and I thought we’d fess up now that enough time has passed.

From here you must fast forward to Friday, March 25, 2005. I was at a track & field meet with my University of Richmond team when a former classmate from SMHS ran into me. We had spoken the year before and he knew that our team would be there. I really enjoyed seeing him and catching up on his family. I don’t want to mention a name here because I really do not want to embarrass him. As he and I sat there with my wife and my college teammate, Howard Nippert…my classmate from SMHS proceeded to explain how he had planted a tree on the football field back in high school. Of course my wife and Howard had each heard the story from me, Tom Hill and Don Harding numerous times over the years. Their heads jerked as they looked at me and then at my SMHS classmate. I was stunned. I asked my classmate to clarify what he was talking about and he proceeded to explain that the shovel he used to dig the hole is still in his dad’s garage. I was thinking that I wish we’d had a shovel that night… Again, I sat there stunned asking for more details as he added to the story referencing the photo in the 1983 yearbook. My mind drifted back to my loyal friends and the solemn pact we made on Saturday, October 23, 1982…to Robbie Prim…my high school teammates… and the great memories from those days…and just how lucky I was to have grown up in the small town of St. Marys. I walked out of the stadium with my cell phone and called Stickman in Waco, TX to tell him the latest development on our 23 year old “50 Yard Line Park” from 1982. He listened to the story and his laugh was exactly the same as it was that cool October night in 1982….Nothing had changed.

Q&A with Spiders Standout-Tim Quinn

This is the first in a series of Q & A with Spiders team members...

Tim Quinn... shown right... (pic#1) "his look" on January 30, '10 after a long run during a 12" snow storm in Richmond... and (pic#2) on his way to earning 1st Team All-Conference honors during the '09 XC season.

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Junior, Tim Quinn (Pittsford, NY) is coming off a breakthrough fall cross country season for the University of Richmond. As a long distance runner on the Spiders track and field and cross country teams he set personal bests of 30:21 in the 10K at the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays in Los Angeles last spring. This fall he led the Spiders in every cross country meet, earned 1st Team All-Conference, narrowly missed All-Region honors and ran a personal best 24:20 for 8K at the Paul Short Invitational. He is also a standout student earning a spot on the All-Academic Team within the league.

We sat down to ask him a few questions about his experiences and future plans.

Question: This fall (2009) you were the top finisher in every cross country meet for the Spiders. How did you feel about the season?

Quinn: Overall, I’m very happy with the season. There are still many things that I want to improve upon, but in general I made big strides from last year to this year. I had high goals for both the conference meet and the regional meet and I fell a little short of both, but now I know that those goals are realistic and I have the ability to compete with the best. As a team we competed hard and we definitely gained a lot of experience going into next fall where we expect to be one of the best teams in the NCAA.

Question: What do you feel was your best performance this fall?

Quinn: I think I had similarly good performances at the Paul Short Invitational, the Atlantic-10 meet and the NCAA Regional meet. At Paul Short, I set a new PR that was almost 30 seconds faster than my previous PR and I placed in the top 30 out of a big field, so that race gave me a lot of confidence. At the A-10 meet, the conditions were so sloppy that I wasn’t able to run my best race in terms of time or place, but I know that I dug deep in that race and I’m proud of the way I fought to get all-conference. I was also pleased with my 33rd place finish at Southeast Regional meet, which was loaded with top teams like UVA, Duke, Louisville, William and Mary and NC State as well as Liberty’s Sam Chelanga, though I’m definitely hungry for even better performances in the future.

Question: You have been successful in balancing academic and athletic success at the highest level as one of the top student-athletes at Richmond. How do you balance the two?

Quinn: I think that my running career has actually helped me balance my academic career more than anything else. With practices at 7:30 in the morning, I have to get to bed early to get my rest, which means I also have to get my work done early. I also try to communicate a lot with professors, and they’re always willing to meet with me outside of class to help with anything I might have missed while we were traveling for a meet. I guess I’m also lucky that my two majors, Political Science and French, aren’t exactly GPA-killers like some of the more rigorous science and math programs that we have here.

Question: What has been your most vivid memory to this point as part of the Spider team?

Quinn:

I think my favorite memory so far comes from our home track meet, the Fred Hardy Invitational, during my freshman outdoor track season. Matt Llano, Andrew Benford, Jonny Wilson and I were all competing against some good competition from VCU and a few other schools in the 3000-meter race. The four of us had also just gotten back from training together over spring break in Florida, and we worked together over the course of the race to sweep the top four spots in personal best times for all of us. Jonny and I passed a few people on the home stretch to secure the sweep, and it was a great feeling doing it as a team in front of our home fans. The next best is probably when Matt Llano qualified for Nationals at the NCAA Southeast Regional meet in 2008. He ran such and awesome race, and I was even lucky enough to accompany him on the trip to Terre Haute where he also ran great. Just being there at nationals was a great experience, and it made me determined to get back there someday as a team.

Question: Your teammates Matt Llano, Andrew Benford and Jon Wilson redshirted this cross-country season. How did that impact the team?

Quinn: The decision to redshirt Llano (29:06-10K), Benford (14:09-5K/8:51-3K steeple), and Wilson (24:27-5 miles) was done with the long-term vision of putting together the best cross-country team we can for the 2010 season. Unfortunately, we knew we were sacrificing to a degree the 2009 season in order to accomplish some pretty high goals next year. However, they were there every step of the season, encouraging and leading the team from the sidelines while doing just about every workout with us. I know that a lot of our freshmen and sophomores benefited from their absence at competitions because they were able to travel more and experience what big-time meets are like and to gain the experience that will help them enormously next year and even after we’ve graduated. It also helped me to see myself as a “front-runner” and to compete in the front pack of every race without being able to key off of Llano or Benford.

Question: Coach Taylor feels your leadership within the team this past fall was exceptional. What have you done differently to prepare for the leadership role?

Quinn: I think the most important part of being a leader on the team is understanding Coach Taylor’s philosophy on training and fully embracing it. Over the last two years I’ve tried really hard to understand why we do what we do and now I’m in a position where I can help make that clear to the underclassmen who are new to the program what’s important in training. I’ve also keyed off of the leadership of my older teammates, like Jon Molz, Benford, Llano and Garrett Graham who have so much experience and have proved that they know what it takes to run fast. It’s also important to mean what you say, and to live the lifestyle of a dedicated runner, which means doing a lot of the small things like eating right, getting eight hours of sleep a night, lifting, getting treatment for injuries, etc.

Question: The depth of the Spiders distance program continues to improve with athletes that were not necessarily the top athletes within their respective states while in high school. How do you account for your improvement and the success of your team?

Quinn: That’s definitely true. In high school, I was probably one of the better runners in my section, but on paper I was hardly worth the time or effort for a Division-I coach to recruit me, and I’m so happy that I was on Coach Taylor’s radar at all. My PR for the 3200 meters in high school was 9:50, and yet by the time my first track race of my freshman year came around, I ran the equivalent of 30 seconds faster over the same distance. Later that year, I ran around 9:25 for the first 3200 meters of my 5,000 meter race at Junior Nationals. I think this improvement comes first and foremost from the incredible coaching that we get from Coach Taylor. He wants us to run fast, and he does an amazing job of making us work beyond what we believed we were capable of doing. We also have a really great group of fun guys and girls assembled here who are super-dedicated to our mission and put 100% into everything we do. Quite honestly, I never expected to be running this fast when I was in high school, and I’m blown away every day by how well the program here at Richmond has helped me to excel. What’s also amazing is how many people on the team also have experiences like mine, including seniors Benford, Llano, Graham and Wilson, and newcomers like Chris York, Jason Skipper, Conor Phelan and Alex Lochner who have already made astounding improvements.

Question: What will be your focus during the indoor and outdoor season’s?

Quinn: During the next two seasons I plan to continue to focus on the longer races on the track, specifically the 3,000 meters to the 10,000 meters during the spring. I have some pretty fast times in mind to run, and I want to continue to improve my PRs so that I can come into next fall prepared to do what I need to do so that our team can accomplish some pretty amazing things. I definitely hope to qualify for the outdoor regional meet in either the 5k or the 10k with a shot at making nationals.

Chapter 5: How the it All Began...Running over Baseball

The Delbert & Alta Mae Taylor Family

The Beginning

Over the years people have asked how my family got into the sport of running. To tell our story you have to understand where we came from and how we grew up…I'm the youngest of 5 boys in my family...We actually started with roots in baseball. My dad (Delbert) coached little league baseball in Pleasant County, West Virginia in the early ‘70’s. It was an age when there were no cell phones or video games. Our television set got 2 channels, one out of Clarksburg and the other out of Wheeling. When the weather was just right we got a 3rd but that was seldom. We lived in the country about 3.5 miles from the town of St. Marys. At the time our entire county had less than 2,000 people in it.

St. Marys and Pleasants County was an awesome place to grow up. I would never trade it for anything and feel fortunate to have grown up there. It was safe and neighbors looked out for each other. It wasn’t uncommon to get together for a cookout any day of the week and the summers were highlighted with fairs and social events at the epicenter of the community, our county park. We had 1 high school within the county…St. Marys High School still stands as the only high school within the county and continues to be the home of the Blue Devils, even though our colors are purple & gold.

Family Sawmill and Work Ethic

My mom (Alta Mae) has a sister, Ina. They grew up on their parent’s farm on Kings Ridge where Ina lives to this day. It’s a beautiful farm with tremendous views of the hills and ridges within the county. I did not get the chance to know my grandmother Rawson since she died just after I was born…My dad grew up as 1 of 9 children. It was big family in a tough world. The great depression devastated many people’s lives. My grandfather, Lee Taylor, was a timber man. He logged and cut stave bolts for a living using horses, an axe and a crosscut saw. It was a tough way to make a living and a rough life without question…A life that required a person to work from daylight to dark 6 days a week. My dad and 2 of his brothers (Art and Harold) continued in the timber business and passed the occupation on to their son’s…my brothers and 1st cousins are now 3rd generation timber cutters.

As my dad and my uncles grew up they worked hard for what they had. They were fighters in every way and believed in settling things with their fists. When someone did them wrong by lying, cheating, stealing or just saying the wrong thing they would take care of it themselves. They did not call the police to settle it…They did not contact a lawyer. They went and spoke to the person, eye to eye. If the issue couldn’t be resolved by explaining it, then the last option was to smack the person or to “tag” them as my dad still puts it. He passed this on to his boys and we quickly learned to settle things the same way. This approach got us each into a pinch more than once.

When my dad was in 8th grade my grandfather laid off the men that worked for him and my dad quit school to work in the family business. A couple years later my grandfather had an accident while working in the timber. He was crushed by a tree and nearly died and spent several months in the hospital. It was a time that you couldn’t survive without some money and with granddad unable to work my dad stepped up into his role. My uncle Art then dropped out of school to work with my dad and support their family. My dad has never stopped working even now at the age of 74 he loves the timber business and his sawmill. He is the hardest working man I have ever met. Not just because he’s my dad, but his work ethic is remarkable. If he is not working he feels guilty. Even though he worked hard he always kept his priorities in place. Nothing came before family. Nothing.

He and my mom met on French Creek in Pleasants County one day while they were both fishing. By the time my dad had gotten to “the fishing hole” my mom and her sister were already there sitting on the large rock in the edge of the water. My dad thought they should leave but they refused. I understand my dad asked again, but this time he was not very nice about it. Again, my mom refused to leave. I’m not sure which side of my family is more stubborn, the Taylor or Rawson side. Regardless, it is a good quality for a distance runner and I believe we got a double dose. My dad gave her one last chance to get out of his fishing hole and she refused. That’s when he pushed her off the rock and into the water. Somehow, a few years later in 1955 they got married and started a family. In all they had 5 boys and 1 daughter. My sister, Delberta passed away 2 weeks after being born and would have been 2 years older than me. With 5 boys (Michael, Clifford, Matthew, Vernon and me) in our family, I am the youngest…They’ve been happily married for 54 years.

As our family grew my dad took a sawmill job in Hundred, WV as the sawyer. He worked and made a name for himself in the timber business and then in 1969 my family moved from Hundred back to St. Marys. My dad took a sawyer’s position with Babcock Lumber Company just across the river in Ohio. Eventually he got into position to purchase that sawmill and convert it into his own business, Hardwood Lumber Company. He built it literally with his own 2 hands. He built the company through hard work, honesty, integrity but hard work was the backbone and foundation for his company. Other than his two brothers (Art and Harold) and my own brothers I only knew one man, Carl Evans that could work hard enough to hold a job with my dad. My dad, to this day, has no patience for lazy people and even less patience for someone looking for a free handout or someone that steals from others. My brothers and I continue to feel the same way. My dad would not tolerate someone sitting down on the job…that also applied to his 5 boys. We went to the sawmill early in our lives and by 9 years old I remember shoveling sawdust from under the saw box in the summer. I also remember going to school followed by cross country or track practice to arrive home in time to work from 6-9PM on the sawmill stacking lumber under the lights. After working on the sawmill until 9PM it was time for homework and bed. By the weekend it was a relief and a vacation to go to a cross country or track meet. Dad believed in teaching us about hard work and I’m grateful for him doing so. Let me repeat, my parents had no patience for laziness when we were growing up. If we were not working on the sawmill then we were expected to be mowing the yard, cutting brush or taking care of the livestock. The foundation was being laid…Having a great work ethic is a cornerstone to our family success in the sport of distance running.

Little League Baseball

My family moved back to St. Marys in 1969 and shortly after we got new neighbors. The Binders lived near us. There were two sisters and their mother along with three children…Brad, Jenny and Stephanie. Brad, along with my brothers loved to play baseball (He eventually got a full scholarship to play baseball at Marshall University...It's probably good that they moved before Jenny and Stephanie got a little older. My brothers were ornery when it came to girls.). There were no flat spots where we lived, so they hacked out an area below our house and played. I was too little to play with them but they sent me running after the foul balls. There were trees that served for each base and a hole between the trees that went into the Binders yard which served as the outfield. The hole in the trees was the only hope you had for hitting a home run. This rough baseball field helped them learn how to hit and how to catch. They played for hours and hours when they were not working on the sawmill. My oldest brother Mike played the outfield. He could run a ball down quicker than anyone and if it was a fly ball forget it. He would catch it….Cliff was the placement hitter. He learned how to position himself to hit the ball to an exact location. To this day if you ask him to hit a ball down the 3rd base line…1st base line…between 2nd and 3rd…he can do it. Matt was the homerun hitter in the family. He could clobber the ball. Baseball was the game…It was our family passion.

I recall every Monday night watching Major League Baseball as a family. We’d sit down and dad would fix popcorn and we’d watch the game on one of the 2 TV stations we got reception for. My dad and brothers knew the players stats by memory. The players were loyal to their professional teams and each year it wasn’t a question of who would return to the team, it was who they would pick up. During this time my dad started coaching Little League Baseball in the late spring. Mike, Cliff, Matt, Vernon and I all played LL at some point. Dad’s Hardwood Lumber Company was the team sponsor and I got to serve as bat boy for Mike, Cliff and Matt's teams. As the years rolled by we became more and more engrained to play baseball. Cliff and Matt made the county Little League All-Star Team and Matt’s final year of little league he had over a .700 batting average. Think about that stat for a second.

High School Baseball
As Mike and Cliff moved into high school they went out for and made the baseball team but they did not see much playing time at all. They were disappointed in the fact that they did not get to play especially since they felt they out practiced and out hustled people in the high school starting lineup. About this same time (1972) the 1st ever Major League Baseball strike began. These two things combined to change the path of our family.

As the spring went into summer and summer into early fall the MLB strike continued. Our Monday night family tradition was not to be. There was no MLB to watch…the players were on strike and forgot about the fans. My dad told us that he would never watch another professional baseball game if the strike continued. Well it did continue and eventually the entire season was cancelled. After the strike MLB would never be the same. The players started to jump from team to team based solely on who was willing to pay them the most....Team management seemed worse and dropped players right and left. There was no loyalty to the team by either and true to his word my dad never watched another professional baseball game…that was 36 years ago. Neither have I...Call us stubborn.

The following spring my brother Cliff went out for the high school baseball team. He faced the same thing Mike faced the year before. He made the team and sat the bench frustrated that he did not get the chance to prove himself. My brother Mike was so fed up with it that he decided he would not even tryout for the baseball team. He elected to go out for the track & field team with the belief that it was a sport that he could prove himself and that he would not be at the mercy of a coach to "give" him playing time. He would earn his position off hard work, just as we had been taught growing up. Through head-to-head competition he would prove himself. The athletes he faced would not be able to hide behind a family name. If they were going to beat him they would have to do it…man-to-man.

The Challenge

As the season progressed Cliff came home more and more aggravated and frustrated following games that the SMHS baseball team lost while he sat the bench. Nothing he could do, he was not put into the lineup. Late into the spring my oldest brother Mike came home from a track & field meet with just the opposite attitude. He was excited and thrilled that he ran the mile and wasn’t that far off the school record. Our family is extremely competitive. Anyone that knows us would say that’s an understatement. To this day we like to win and we like to be around winners. We believe sports are about winning and losing...they are not about participation. Work by the rules and win! It goes back to growing up in a large, competitive family. Back then we were even more competitive. As Mike walked through the house joyous, Cliff was just the opposite. Then Cliff and Mike started to argue. That’s when Cliff said he could outrun Mike. Of course Mike said no way he could do it and anytime he wanted to give it a try, come on. The next night Cliff joined the track & field team. Two weeks later Mike ran the Mile to place 4th while Cliff placed 4th in the 2 Mile at the regional championships and set the SMHS school record which I believe my brother Vernon broke a few years later. That one challenge…that one sentence can be traced to our long career of running and continued passion for it.

17 of 25 athletes
The following spring several of my cousins joined the track & field team. At one point the SMHS team had 25 members and 17 of those team members were Taylor’s. In 1976 two of my brothers, Cliff and Matt joined two first cousins (brothers Dale and Kevin) to win the state meet 4x880 Relay and set the meet record. Their record still stands since the English measurements were retired when the events changed to metric. I remember sitting in the stands at old Laidley Field watching them compete. They were undefeated in the 4x880 during that season and the state meet would be no different. By the time my brother Matt hit the finish line as the anchor they had a 170M lead over 2nd place. I was 11 years old at the time. Hearing the crowd roar and seeing the look in my brother’s eyes while they raced. Their eyes were piercing. The focus…the intensity…the passion…the LOOK...that determination to win. I knew then and there that I wanted to be part of that. I was a sponge taking it all in and wanted to be like my older brothers.

After they won that 4x880 race, state championship titles became expected by us. Ultimately, each of my brothers were crowned state champion during their running careers. Mike won his state titles after graduating and competing in road races. Quickly my brothers turned from searching for a state title as the ultimate goal, to our family expecting nothing less. We were constantly trying to outdo each other while being supportive of each other. Its funny how it happened and how quickly we all changed our expectations. It was a matter of “my brother did it, so I’ll do it.” No one in our family ever spoke about it in that way, but we refused to lose. We may have seemed ok when someone beat us but trust me; we were not ok with it. We took it personally and I know I privately vowed to not let it happen. I vowed to never go into a race unprepared to give it my best effort. Our sport of choice was directly connected to our own ability to push into a level of self achieved discomfort and to embrace pain. Each of us believed we could handle more pain than the athlete standing next to us on the starting line. After all, it was fun to test our limits and see what we could endure. It was not a cocky belief that we wore on our sleeve for all to see. It was a quiet, self confidence that we dealt with internally…that personal battle that every distance runner faces with the “man in the mirror”. Can you push beyond your limits and embrace the personal pain that is inevitable with every distance race title.

By the time I got to high school following my 4 older brothers (Mike, Cliff, Matt and Vernon) and numerous cousins, my race battles were nearly won just by the reputation of my brothers, cousins and the name "Taylor". I don’t think I realized that until years later. By the time I entered 9th grade my brothers taught me that there were three qualities you had to have to become successful as a distance runner and they hold true to this day:
1) You must be willing to work…no lazy person will ever have success as a distance runner…
2) You must be competitive…competitive to your soul…In races you must have a purpose and your purpose must be engrained deeper than that of your competitor.
3) You must be willing to embrace pain and push through it until you enter another realm. Once you have been there and achieved self awareness at that level you will want to return to that place. The “runners high” as some people call it is indescribable and will call you back for more.

This foundation was the beginning which led to racing around the world…but that’s another story.

Reflecting on Ryan Jobes...

(L-R) Neil Slotterback, Brendan Regan, Pete Norquist,
Hunter Willis, Mike Stubbs and Jon Molz

...and the Band of Brothers he formed

In 2003 my oldest brother Mike was a track & field/cross country coach for Williamstown High School in Williamstown, West Virginia…We talk often and he and my brother Clifford keep Lori and I posted on the athletes within the state they believe have the ability to compete at the NCAA DI level. I recall a time when Mike mentioned that he had a young man he felt would be someone to keep an eye on in the years to come. That was when I first heard the name, Ryan Jobes…

Later that school year I attended the WV State Track & Field Championships and first watched Ryan race. It was pure…that unique and rare talent that is obvious to a coach as soon as you see it. When he stepped onto the Laidley Field Track in Charleston you could see that he was different. He had “it”….A weird aura surrounds the best ones. As a coach, you know it when you see it. Ryan had it.

He led his Yellow Jackets to the state team championship that weekend and impressed me with his running form, competitiveness and absolute desire to win. When you watched him race, it was obvious that he refused to lose and that he believed no matter how far behind he was when he got the baton he could anchor his team to victory…and…he did.

That summer Ryan attended our high school cross country camp and I realized quickly that he was also simply put, an exceptional person. He had a good sense of humor, got along with everyone, was polite, always had a grin and seemed like he could do everything...

One of our counselors, Howard Nippert, was undefeated at ping pong in 6 years of camps. That summer Howard once again stood in front of the campers and announced he would take on all-comers in ping pong. Knowing Ryan was an All-State Tennis player, I looked at him as he took in Howard’s words and the challenge with an ever-so-slight little grin. I asked Ryan later if he could play ping pong and he responded, “Not really”. He was being modest like he tended to be. I guessed he did not want to come off as cocky or over confident. So, I asked my brother Mike, his high school coach… "Can Jobes play?"…My brother never answered me…he just laughed.

Later that week the ping pong tournament became a reality. I watched as Howard swept through the rounds and Ryan did the same. When Howard and Ryan faced off it was a classic…What you might call epic in the world of camp ping pong. Ryan either learned quickly or he knew what he was doing. The ping pong ball would come across the table with lightning speed…The next stroke it would cross the net, hit the table and spin off to the right… On the following stroke it would cross the net, hit the table and spin off to the left. I chuckled and shook my head as I watched. Ryan was stoic throughout...All business. I believe the final score was roughly 21-5, 21-7, 21-8 for a best of 5 series.

We recruited Ryan his senior year in high school to join our University of Richmond Track & Field and Cross Country team's. After a very good regular season in cross country it ended with him coming down with appendicitis right before the state meet, so he did not get to run…He went to the state meet to cheer on his teammates…

As winter arrived he played basketball and as an example of his ability, he scored 34 points against Doddridge County High School…Then as spring rolled around it was track and field season for Ryan. We felt good about the recruitment process and eventually got the commitment from Ryan. He would join our Spider program. At the state meet his senior year he once again led his team to the State Championship title. He won the open 400M, 800M, 1600M and anchored the winning 4x400M victory in what can only be described as remarkable to those that saw it. I sat in the stands thinking how excited I was that he would be on our team (watch him anchor his 4x400M relay team here).

As Ryan began his career as a Spider, he grew as a young man. With “Jobes” as I called him, it was quickly obvious that he pulled people together. During his freshman year he excelled in the middle distance events. At the Duke Invitational, he anchored our 4x400 relay to their season-best performance with a 48.2 split and he was twice honored as the Atlantic 10 Conference Rookie of The Week. As his freshman year came to a close he was gaining confidence. At the 2005 Atlantic 10 Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships he came from back in the pack of the 800M closing over the final 150M to place 3rd, earning All-Conference and nearly stealing the race title.

The following fall Ryan completed his sophomore cross country season. We had a successful season and another very strong semester academically for our team. Life was good and all was well. Then on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 our world changed...

I recall sitting at home in our living room with Lori and our son Luke, excited for Christmas and the Holidays. Our team members had just finished the semester and most were already home. A few had finals late into finals week, but in all the semester had come to a close and Lori and I were looking forward to spending time with Luke and our family and friends. Luke had recently celebrated his 2nd birthday… On this particular evening I had just gotten the fire in our fireplace going and sat in a chair with Luke asleep in my arms. That’s when I received the call that would forever change our lives and many of the athletes at the University of Richmond at the time.

It was 8:20PM when my mom called. We get very few calls on our house phone, so when the phone rang I looked at Lori and said "uuh oh, this isn’t good”. I can't explain why...I just knew it was not good...I picked up the phone and the pit in my stomach started turning. My mom started right into the reason for her call. No small talk, no way to break the news gently. She said, “Steve… I have bad news.” Words you never want to hear from your parents. She continued, “Your runner…the Jobes boy from Williamstown…was killed this afternoon in a car accident”. I paused…my head was spinning and my thoughts were reeling. 15 seconds earlier the world couldn't have been a better place…With those few words everything changed…Everything.

I couldn't think…all I could say was, “What!?!...What do you mean?” Then I repeated out loud what my mom said to me, not thinking that Lori was standing in the living room holding Luke. As I repeated my mom’s words out loud so I could hear myself say them…helping me grasp what I was hearing, Lori cried out “No…no…no…no!” My mom continued and explained that a family friend of ours that is a policeman in WV called to tell her and to ask if I knew. My mom gave me what details she knew, which was very little at the time. I remember asking, “Are you sure it was Ryan?” She confirmed it…I might have asked her a few more times… I couldn’t think…I couldn’t breathe…I couldn’t comprehend. I mumbled something into the phone and hung up.

I walked over and sat down on the couch speechless…looking at Lori while she held Luke…my head in my hands. For the first time in my coaching career I didn’t know what to do. What do you do when you are told one of your athletes has been killed in a car accident? What do you do?

I realized I had a lot of tough calls to make. His parents and family were suffering and in shock for sure and his teammates were at their own homes completely unaware of what happened that afternoon. I can’t begin to express how difficult picking up the phone and calling his parents and his teammates was. I couldn’t grasp that Jobes was gone. It felt like someone had stolen a piece of us. We all struggled…We all felt the loss…What can you do? You do what grown men and coaches don’t talk about…. That weakness that you never show as an athlete…The thing I’d done 4 times in my adult life…We cried…We wept…alone.

The next few days are still a blur. Everything up to that moment is vivid in my memory. As we drove to Williamstown, WV for the funeral and to see his family, friends and teammates we would drive the same exact route that Ryan drove. As we traveled, I pictured Ryan’s drive knowing that we would reach Sandstone Mountain where he crashed about halfway to his home. Still all we knew was that Ryan had hit the back of a slow moving semi-truck while going up Sandstone Mountain outside of Beckley, WV. Reports were that he died instantly. I knew Sandstone Mountain well. I drove it countless times going home to visit my parents and family in the town next to Ryan’s hometown. It is one of the most scenic places on the 6 hour drive. I tried to understand how it could have happened. Did the setting sun hit his windshield and blind him?…Had he fallen asleep? We all tried to make sense of it. We all tried to grasp the loss. We all wanted an explanation. We all needed an explanation. We all wanted to know what happened.

The days and weeks to come were not good for anyone. I wanted to help his family…his friends…his teammates but there didn’t seem to be anything that could give relief to the pain and loss we were each feeling. It was the same pain but expressed and shown differently by everyone. It was about the time of his funeral that I finally thought of my brother Mike, his high school coach…The man that knew Jobes better and longer than I had known him was going through the same things we were.

“…This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…”William Shakespeare-Saint Crispin's Day Speech.

As the days, weeks, months and now years passed a ‘Band of Brothers’ formed within his graduating class. To go into everything Jobes’ Band of Brothers experienced in their time at UR would be hard to explain or describe and would not do justice to the men and the others that have been along side them during their journey. They pulled together in a way that could only happen in the worst of experiences, like the loss of a teammate, friend and brother. They were calloused and hardened while clutching compassion for each other...

(L-R) Hunter Willis, Ryan Jobes, Jon Molz, Pat Barkhuff,
Pete Norquist, John Ciccarelli, Brian Gildea,
Brendan Regan and Michael Stubbs following the
2004 UVA XC Invitational (9/18/04) 

There’s his roommate Brandon Regan…who suffered a career of injuries to battle back to compete at the conference championships his senior year. Countless hours and years of cross training pointed to that day his senior year when he pulled on his Richmond uniform and stepped onto the track in Massachusetts. The moment can’t be described….Mike Stubbs, who miraculously found he had a rare heart defect and days after having heart surgery insisted that he be there at our conference championships with his Band of Brothers. When he walked into the facility I got chills up my spine… Pete Norquist who also had heart surgery. He needed to fix a defective heart valve after a miraculous discovery that likely saved his life. Although his competitive athletic career was over he stayed on as an assistant coach to be with his brothers and to see it to the end…Jon Molz who quietly took care of business with passion, intensity and desire to also finish what Jobes could not winning many championship titles in pursuit… Neil Slotterback, our javelin thrower, who worked every day with an inspired work ethic driven by purpose and focus on the goals… And there's Hunter Willis, another of the Band of Brothers from Jobes’ class that would never, ever quit… I watched him throw move after move in the 10K at the conference meet two years in a row bringing pain to the competitors in his race…When it appeared it would not be possible to elevate his pain tolerance and deliver more to the competitors, he dug deeper within himself to find even more mental and physical strength.

Ryan Charles Jobes

These men are a Band of Brothers and they are men that will not quit and they will not forget their friend. They are Champions. They are the men that, like me, still look for an explanation that will not come and yet they stand firm. Confident in who they are. Better people for an experience that we all wish we could somehow fix. They are a Band of Brothers connected ultimately by a common thread…Ryan Charles Jobes.