Two Schools, Two Decades of Girls XC Domination

Fayetteville-Manlius and Saratoga have no tricks up their sleeves

March 2, 2010

Sorry, cross country fans, but if you hope to pick the brains of the coaches from girls national powers Fayetteville-Manlius or Saratoga Springs–both from upstate New York, about 100 miles apart–you'll probably be wasting your time. Bill (pictured on right) and John Aris, father-and-son coaches at Fayetteville, and Art and Linda Kranick, husband-and-wife coaches at Saratoga, cannot shed much light on their remarkable success. Indeed, the Kranicks, when asked to make an appearance, have more than once come up to me saying, "What can we tell them? It's not about the workouts."

After the Fayetteville girls won their fourth straight Nike Cross Nationals high school team championship last December in Portland, Ore., and Saratoga, the 2004 champion, placed second in the 22-team field, the scholastic distance community buzzed with the same old question: How do they do it?

From 1993 to 2003, prior to NXN, the young ladies from Saratoga were ranked first in the country eight times, second twice and fifth once. In five appearances at NXN, Saratoga, in addition to winning in '04, has been second twice with a third and a fourth. With Fayetteville's current supremacy, these two New York teams have been best in the country nearly every year for almost two decades.

Well, how do they do it? Once, I watched Saratoga train on its home course. It was just the usual stuff. I've spoken with the Aris men about their training. They're not reinventing the wheel. Distance, tempo, hills, intervals, core work–a familiar mix. If you took the teams' workouts and gave them to another team, would that team rise to the top? I doubt it.

It's like asking a teacher how he or she reaches students while others, with the same curriculum, don't. The Aris's and Kranicks' secret weapon is themselves. It's not enough to say they have passion because all good coaches do. It's not enough to say they engender trust in their athletes or promote team unity because, again, probably all 44 teams competing at NXN had that. And it's not enough to say they have tradition because many of the NXN finalists had been there before, and most had been state powers for years. In that regard, Nike Cross Nationals has become a kind of annual reunion of the leading distance programs.

The coaches' success extends to their boys squads. Fayetteville boys placed second at NXN in 2004 and third in '05. This year they were state champions even though their top runner was lost for the season after kidney surgery and then an unrelated bout of shingles. Saratoga was NXN boys champion in 2005.

But nothing compares to these two schools' girls records, and there's no end in sight. Fayetteville returns four of its top seven for next fall with many young tigers waiting in the wings. Saratoga returns its top four led by a pair of freshmen.

So, what is it? The harsh upstate New York weather and rigorous, hilly conditions they often confront? Maybe that helps callous them, but don't bad weather and tough courses exist elsewhere? Both teams have won big races in all manner of conditions. Bill Aris told me in Portland that he preferred tough conditions because that makes for authentic cross country, not because his squad needed it.

It goes deeper than that, to whom these coaches are and what they believe in. It's what comes from the heart, because the coaches' words and gestures, their values, their way of embracing what is truly meaningful even if it's not popular, comes through, touching the youngsters' hearts. Heart-to-heart wins the day, and, apparently, the race.

At Saratoga, Art handles the training–the body. Linda handles the athletes' emotions–the mind. It's a full-service operation: 24/7/365. The Kranicks' vacations are to meets, like when they go to San Diego for Foot Locker. In 2004, Saratoga had four finalists, a record for one school. Their current team leaders, Kiki Hollowood and Maddy Carr, are regular kids. Art spotted them in P.E. class and encouraged them to run. He knew they could smile, warming him like sunshine. He knew nothing about their aerobic capacity.

At Fayetteville, Bill and John–who also make house calls year-around–preach a "Stotan" philosophy that has its roots in the work ethic and stripped-down simplicity of the Australian coach Percy Cerruty. Stotan combines "stoic" and "spartan." The term first came to light when the Fayetteville boys swept the first five places in team course record time at the 2004 Manhattan Invitational at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. When people started asking, "How do you do it?" Bill said, "Stotan."

Last December at NXN, the Fayetteville girls went out full blast. Molly Malone and Courtney Chapman had the audacity to run up front for almost half the 5k race (actually, 5,083m) against superior runners in contention for the individual title. It was almost reckless–Malone and Chapman wound up 24th and 26th–but it was also very Stotan. Fayetteville wanted to run a race worthy of three-time defending champions. They could have played it safe; victory was nearly a lock. "Risking failure," John Aris said afterwards. "That was the theme."

To these girls, and to their coaches, running hard in the season's championship finale was a responsibility, a way to define themselves and show how true champions respond to the moment. "We wanted to make a statement," said Bill. "We were looking for perfection, a zero compression. We knew it would not happen but we went in with that intent."

That lofty idealism resulted in the five scoring girls placing 21st, 24th, 26th, 28th and 36th, with a 17-second spread, or compression. After displacement of "individuals," Fayetteville's score was 74 and their average time was 18:22. In second, Saratoga scored 147 and averaged 18:50. Third went to Fort Collins, seventh the previous two years. Saugus, California's top squad and two-time runner-up, was fourth. Magnificat, an all girls parochial school from Rocky River of Ohio, took fifth.

Fayetteville's first scorer changes with each meet, signifying across-the-board leadership and an all-for-one community. This time Kare Sischo, a sophomore who missed last season with a broken leg, was first. After the race, she said, "We love each other. Knowing I can be like them means everything to me." She meant the seniors, like Malone, who said of the team's closeness, "When we didn't see each other for one day, on Thanksgiving, it was a shock how much we missed one another."