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Raffin Reports:
Linden's run at the top continues

Even Linden cross county coach Clint Lawhorne concedes his team has a lot returning this fall from a squad that easily won the boys Division 2 title last fall. “Five of our seven state meet runners return as do four junior varsity runners who ran from 17:30 to 18:15,” said Lawhorne, who now begins his sixth season with the Eagle harriers.  “the potential is there, but last year we ran the greatest race ever run by a Linden cross country team, and some teams that were serious contenders did not run their greatest races.”  For a young cross country coach, Lawhorne has quickly master-minded the school into a yearly Division 2 power.  The last three years the team had finished fifth, third, and first in races at the Michigan International Speedway. And with another top finish in 2009, Linden definitely looks to be the boys Division 2 team of this decade.

And to top off this year, Lawhorne found what ever coach wishes for, “a sleeper,” in track last spring when a youngster named Dan Fisher, now a sophomore moved into the distance events from the sprints half-way through track season. 

According to Lawhorne, Fisher, also a former ninth grade football player, “loves the distances, and ran a ton this summer.”

Linden already returns 2nd team scorer Jake Hord, 9th scorer Brendon Sage, 29th scorer Dylan Ryan, 49th scorer Mark Wright, and 94th scorer Garrett Chappell, all seniors, who would score 173 points with last year’s placings.

Also, Lawhorne was pleased with the team’s summer running of his 2009 team.  The coach runs with the team two times a week with fifteen to twenty team members at every meeting day.

“The runners log their summer miles;  for the most they are on their own,” said the coach.

Once the season starts, Lawhorne conducts a yearly second-day practice.

“If the practice goes better than year’s, we know where we’re at and what we have.  The purpose is to have the runner say to himself, ‘If I’m better now, than I was last year, then I’ll end the season better,’” Lawhorne explained.

Almost a week later I asked Lawhorne how that second day practice went, and he told, “It was a positive experience.”

When the season begins, the Linden team runs only once a day and does not go to any camp.

So far, the team has run in two meets, once at Durand, where Lawhorne split his squad evenly into two varsity teams and was outscored by Hartland, from the tough Kensington Valley Conference, and a second time at Corunna where the team was outscored by a young, but upcoming Flint Powers Catholic team, that finished 10th in Division 2 last fall.

But everything is in perspective at Linden because the team’s top runner Hord noted that it wasn’t how the team finished at the beginning of the season, but how  the team finishes at the end of the season.

And Lawhorne knows that there are Division 2 schools out there that will be improved from last year.

“I know other teams didn’t run perfect races last year at MIS, and they could be better this year,” he said.  “By the end of the year there will be a strong and competitive field.”

Linden will run at Bath, Holly, in the Genesee County area meet, at Portage, the Flint Metro League meet, the regional, the state, and four league meets.

Lawhorne is not new to coaching.  He was a nine year veteran on the football staff at Linden and has coached track and field at Linden for fifteen years, mostly as the head coach. 

In the six years as a cross country coach, Lawhorne has fallen in love with cross country, for as he said, “I found what I wanted to do even though I enjoyed playing and coaching football. When I first started coaching cross country I knew I loved what I was doing.”

And he likes the sharing with coaches, and he soon found out that there were no secrets among coaches.

“There is just a different mentality among cross country coaches,” said Lawhorne. “Jon Davidson over at St. Clair shares with me everything he knows as have a lot of other coaches.”

I have seen Lawhorne perform in the classroom at Linden High School a number of times, and he is a top notch teacher of mathematics, who took took his solid teaching background, his strong fundamentals from his football coaching, his genuine concern for students and athletes, and parlayed those gifts to become one of Michigan’s outstanding cross country coaches in six short years.

And when November rolls around, some of those contending division 11 teams like Vicksburg, Chelsea, Flint Powers, Grand Rapids Forest Hills Eastern, Fremont, and Williamston better be prepared for the Linden team that ran in 2008 “way better” than its coach thought to run twice that in 2009.      

                        (Any questions or comments contact me at draffin13@yahoo.com)