They’re a competitive team, these Class 2A state meet-bound Bruceville-Eddy cross country runners, easily disgusted at the thought of losing - especially to a teammate.
“If you slack off in any of our practices, one of our guys is going to be right on your butt,” Doty says. “If you don’t go, they’re going to catch you.
“It’s basically, let’s just see who wins.”
Even the easiest of practices has become serious business around here. There’s almost always talk beforehand about who’s going to beat who and how it could go down. And if it happens, well, you can imagine what happens next with this cut-throat group.
“If we win,” sophomore Greg Bostick said, “we brag. We brag quite a bit.”
Doty, a sophomore who’s emerged as one of Class 2A’s top runners, knows all too well how it works. Find a way to beat him at practice and you’ve got bragging rights for days.
“If you get out there and you get beat one day, you’re going to hear about it,” Doty said. “And you don’t want to hear about it from that person beating you on a day they usually don’t.”
It’s that highly competitive nature among these close friends that’s made the Eagles into one of 2A’s best. Heading into Saturday’s University Interscholastic League State Cross Country Meet at Old Settlers Park in Round Rock, they’re expected to finish among the top five.
But this group believes it’s capable of much more. The Eagles have their eyes on Bruceville-Eddy’s first state championship.
“If we go and run the way I know we’re capable of, I don’t see a reason why we can’t be on that medal stand,” coach David Melvin said.
Of course, aside from the all-important teamwide bragging rights, those easy workouts turned cut-throat competitions have a practical purpose.
The better the Eagles are individually, the tougher they are to beat collectively.
“We try our hardest to beat each other so that we get better,” Bostick said. “As one person moves up, we all try and move up.”
Five of the seven runners - Doty, Bostick, sophomore Frankie Martinez and juniors Art Castillo and Hugo Garcia - returned from last season’s team that finished seventh at state. With all that returning talent, the competitive spirit has reached a fever pitch this season.
They say they put in more miles than ever before over the summer - at least 40 per week, often running twice a day - to get themselves ready for the season’s last two weeks.
At last week’s Region II meet in Arlington, nearly everyone found a way to trim at least a few seconds from last season’s time.
Doty’s improvement was the most dramatic, dropping nearly 30 seconds from his time last season. After finishing second in 16:29, Doty enters the state meet ranked fifth in the state.
Behind him are Castillo, Bostick, Edgar Garica and Hugo Garcia, who are all capable of finishing a 5,000-meter (3.1-mile) race in less than 18 minutes.
At practice, when they’re just competing against each other, they’re all gunning for Doty.
He gladly welcomes the challenge. The more they push themselves to get close to him, the better the team becomes.
“Everybody’s getting faster and that’s pushing me to get faster to stay in front,” Doty said. “If I stop working, then they’re going to beat me.”
But it’s nothing about Doty himself, more in what he represents.
The Eagles, too, want to not only be the school’s best but among the fastest in the state.
“Having a lot of guys on your team that want the prize allows the practices to be extremely competitive,” Melvin said. “They all have designs on being district champion, regional champion. Tye’s emergence has really brought an extra level of competitiveness to practice.”
And making each other better is what it’s been about this season. Sure the competition gets intense at times, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Every time one teammate challenges another, they say, everyone gets better.
“If we didn’t have a pretty good team, our runners wouldn’t be as good as they are,” Doty said. “Being good makes us work even harder.”
rschneider@temple-telegram.com
