Sunday, April 27, 2008
DeMarco, Bruins keep on running
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
They're not sure the guy actually sleeps. This has been a popular debate among members of the Blacksburg High School track team: Does coach James DeMarco actually put his head on a pillow, close his eyes and take a break?
"We've never figured it out," Blacksburg distance runner Laurel MacMillan said with a laugh. "If he does sleep, it's at really odd hours. We've speculated about that."
They know he operates his own running store in Blacksburg. They know he trains people for marathons. They know he puts out a regular newsletter about the New River Valley running scene. They know he's a former college All-American, a guy that's lived in Europe, in Alaska and a bunch of places in between.
"And he does all these different things that we don't know about," Blacksburg junior Brian Hencke said. "We'll be leaving from practice, and he says he's off to coach some other group of runners we haven't heard of.
"He has so much energy; it's ridiculous."
Yet still he finds time to know the times. Personal bests of the fastest and slowest Bruins. School standards set by great runners of the past at each stage of their careers. The personalities of each of his athletes, the nonverbal signals each runner gives, whether they prefer to run with the pack or hang back and kick it in at the end of the race.
"He's really inclusive," said senior Avery Mattingly, a William and Mary signee who entered Saturday at Timesland's leader in the girls' 800 meters. "You can tell that he cares about everyone, whether they're going to make it to finals or just go out and do their best in a race."
This is why the names litter the Timesland distance running leaderboard. Boys and girls. Freshmen and seniors. The only real common thread among them is the school beside their names -- Blacksburg, Blacksburg, Blacksburg -- and their coach, James DeMarco.
They were all out there again Saturday at Salem, competing in the Cosmopolitan Invitational. Some kids were shooting for personal bests; others, for meet records. DeMarco paid close attention to it all. Because the restless 34-year-old wasn't just trying to win a track meet. He was also building for two, three, four years down the line.
"It's not an easy sport," DeMarco said. "As a coach, you have to make a very big deal about the little accomplishments, the baby steps along the way."
In DeMarco's five years with the program -- including the past two as the head coach of the boys' and girls' teams -- the Bruins have taken Sasquatch strides in the distance running events. Record-setting senior Peter Dorrell is a big part of that, to be sure, but so are names like Mattingly, Hencke, MacMillan, George Carter, Trinity Foreman, Matt Howard, Joanna Stevens -- and on and on.
It's a culture now, building upon itself. The girls have won the Group AA cross country title two years in a row and are shooting for the triple crown this year in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track. The boys? Well, they finished third in the state indoor meet, and the best is apparently on the way.
"The freshmen I have on this boys' team will be the best, maybe, in Virginia history," DeMarco said, waving his hand toward a half-dozen of his youngsters, five of whom are already running the mile in under 5 minutes. "I guarantee you that four years from now, they'll have three Peter Dorrells on this squad. It's going to be unbelievable."
The practice have gotten tougher each year. "Insane," Carter called them. But they work. Carter is already running faster times than Dorrell did as a freshman, and he credits DeMarco for much of it.
They all do.
"Even when he gives us a really hard workout, he somehow works it in our mind to make it seem like he's doing us the favor," MacMillan said. "Which I guess he is."
DeMarco has been a health nut since youth. His father, who served in the Air Force, died at the age of 50. DeMarco figures the smoking, poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyle -- unless you count golf, which was hard to do much since they lived in Alaska -- had a lot to do with it. So he's always gone the opposite way, driving himself to take on more and more challenges, and that rubs off on his athletes.
"Kids love to work hard," he said. "That's the biggest misconception out there. But they've got to see success coming. They've got to know that, 'I'm working really hard and I'm going to go somewhere.' "
They know it. They can see it in the times and in the growing smile on their coach's face.
Now, just once, if they could only catch him napping.
