Wilbur Cross X‑Country Crosses Out Old Records

Travis Martin is one of the fastest long-distance runners in the state. As soon as the cross-country season kicks off, his high school teachers might expect his grades to drop. But Martin said that’s actually right when his scores start to shoot up.

Before cross-country, ​“I wasn’t failing, but I wasn’t where I should have been. My homework was rarely done. I wouldn’t do it in other classes if it didn’t appeal to me,” Martin said. ​“Once I found cross-country, I had an outlet for my jitteriness. I could go home and do my homework. It felt so much easier. This little thing that takes up two hours of my day could bring my [GPA] up a point and a half.”

On Wilbur Cross’s boys cross-country team, academic and athletic performance go hand in hand. As the team carried out a record-breaking season this year, the coaches made sure that grades didn’t lag as the win-loss record went up.

Locally, within the Southern Connecticut Conference, Wilbur Cross’s team placed 3rd out of 18 teams — the best performance in the school’s history. Earlier this decade, they’d been stuck at 17th, 15th, 15th, 14th, 10th, 8th and 6th.

At the State Open, Cross finished 11th out of 143 teams— a standout performance for a team that had never been competitive enough to even qualify a full roster before.

Martin, a senior at Common Ground High School who runs with the Cross team, even qualified for the regional New England championships. He didn’t start cross-country until his junior year, but he now clocks a 5K run in just over 16 minutes.

But as the team sped past previous records, the students never fell behind in their studies.

Among the varsity team members, the average grade point average is 4.35, when weighted for college-level courses. Two of the runners rank in the top 10 scorers in their class at Cross, and the others aren’t far behind.

Mohammed Hussain, a senior at Cross, agreed that his grades are better when he’s running.

“When I’m not in season, I’ll come home and feel super lazy. I’ll watch TV,” he said. ​“Exercise really clears my brain and gets me ready to do the work. I have a set schedule with time to do my homework. I’m a lot more on top of my stuff.”

Throughout the district, sports teams are trying to emulate that success. Many coaches have done that by setting high expectations students have to meet to play, along with tutoring programs and study sessions.

For Cross’s cross-country team, that came naturally. They’d learned about hard work as they showed up for summer conditioning, persistence as their legs burned on uphill climbs, and teamwork as they worked out the places they’d have to earn to bring home a trophy. All of that translated over to their schoolwork, too.

Coach Travis Gale, who was named Southern Connecticut Conference’s coach of the year, arrived at Wilbur Cross in 2013 with a goal of building up the school’s running program.

Before that, he’d been a gym teacher at Fair Haven School. Edith Johnson, Cross’s principal, convinced him to transfer over, assuaging worries that he’d look puny next to high school boys. ​“They’re just bigger eighth graders,” she told him.

Year after year at Cross, Gale recruited more runners. He brought in players from other sports with promises that they’d be faster on the basketball court or the baseball field in a few months. This season, there were close to 85 runners on the team, almost three times as big as when Gale started.

Now that the program had found its footing, the varsity team felt like this year was their chance to break through.

“We’d all been running for so long, working out for so long. We all decided we wanted to be here to make a difference in the program,” said Michael Tramontano, a Cross senior. ​“We wanted to pioneer the way, to set a course for others to follow and do better.”

“We were all really hungry. We had the resources here, and we wanted to implement it,” added Nassaiah Betancourt, another Cross senior. ​“We wanted to be great.”

As the season went on, the boys pushed each other to keep pace, always competing to catch up with whoever was ahead. The competition also carried over into academics, Tramontano said, as they compared grades and SAT scores over sandwiches at P&M Fine Foods after practice.

That’s what makes cross-country much more “team-oriented” than track, Hussain said. “It’s a lot more tight, because we know each other so well,” he said.

“These are my closest friends,” said Eamon Hill, a Cross senior. “I would be hanging out with them after school anyway. It’s pretty much like being with your friends, just on an eight-mile run.”

The boys ran every day after school until around 5 p.m., as the sun started to sink during the fall months.

They often trained on a stretch of Huntington Street to get ready for hills on the courses. From Hooker Middle School, the street they took rises 65 feet up within three blocks, crests on Prospect Hill and plunges 43 feet down, past Albertus Magnus College. The team hit it multiple times each practice, as they geared up for an invitational with a big slope.

That’s how cross-country can really instills a mental toughness, said Henry Hall, a senior and a team captain.

“Just at practice, the things I’ve learned about myself have been ridiculous, like the feeling that you can do something, truly understanding and working through the physical struggle,” Hall said. “You can take that back to the classroom. Just looking back on it, I can tell I was missing out [before cross-country]. I didn’t have the same drive, I didn’t have the same determination.”

It fits with a line that Coach Gale often tells his runners: ​“Track is life.”

By that, he means that his athletes need to stay on task, work with teammates and run their laps if they want to hit their goals. It also literally means eating right, getting a full night’s rest and managing time.

“This is what we talk about when we say the ​‘whole child,’” said Will Clark, the district’s chief operating officer. ​“There is a direct link between health, nutrition and positive school engagement. With coaches like Coach Gale, these links become natural as do the results: better focus, attention, behavior, attendance, grades and a sense of community.”

Next year, ​“we may not see the same level of success on the course. Who knows, we may see better,” Clark added. ​“But for sure, what we will see are happy, healthy kids that can compete in all areas of life.”