For Cross-Country Slogans, Run of the Mill Won't Do

By Preston Williams
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Name the most distinctive piece of apparel for a cross-country runner. Shoes? Not necessarily, even though a comfortable pair certainly is crucial to pound out all those miles. Uniform? Maybe. But as long as there is something to pin a race number to, chances are any jersey and shorts will do.

The answer is . . . T-shirts. Shirts that are worn not during the race but usually before and after, with catchy slogans on the back trumpeting the merits of cross-country, directly or indirectly.

A couple of Saturdays ago at the Oatlands Invitational at Oatlands Plantation in Loudoun County, on a sun-kissed day that would have made even the most steadfast hermit question his lifestyle choices, Varsity Letter spent a few hours traipsing around the village of tents that served as the teams' headquarters for their seven-hour stay.

Their goal: Run their best times of the season. Our goal: Document as many shirts as possible and try to understand why this fashion choice is such an ingrained part of high school cross-country.

The slogans ran the gamut. Some were simple ("Go Hard or Go Home!"). Others were inspirational ("There Is No Glory in Practice, but Without Practice There Is No Glory") or boosterish ("Cross Country Does Not Build Character . . . It Defines It!"). Other shirts were needling ("Cross Country, Finally, a Good Use of a Golf Course"), humorous ("Run Like You Stole Something!") or aggressive ("Trample the Weak! Hurdle the Dead!").

Then there were the guilt-inducing ("Somewhere in The World Someone's Training When You Are Not. When You Race Him, He Will Win.") and edgy ("We Haul Ours to Kick Yours") and mysterious ("What Happens at Lake Fairfax Stays at Lake Fairfax").

These tricked-out T's, popular among distance runners for years, highlight the individual nature of cross-country enthusiasts and the collective satisfaction that they get from choosing such a self-motivational sport that taxes both mind and body. Sometimes an entire team might be decked out in the same style of shirt. Other times, some kids are wearing shirts from previous seasons or ones they decorated themselves.

One of the first shirts we encountered was the Damascus version: "Cross country -- no halftimes, no timeouts, no substitutions. It must be the only true sport."

Why did this one appeal to the Swarmin' Hornets?

"We're kind of bashing every sport on our jersey, but they know we don't really have any hostility toward them," sophomore Joe Dobrzanski said, while sucking on wedges of orange. "It takes drive. In football, you don't run 3 1/2 miles every game you go to."

The Annandale runners also pride themselves on cross-country's rigors with their "My Sport Is Your Sport's Punishment" shirt. "Most people do find running as punishment," junior Alexis Williams said. "We find it fun."

The Annandale girls are pro-runner, not just pro-Annandale runner. During at least one race, several female Atoms lingered along the backstretch to encourage girls from other schools: "Almost there!" "Finish strong!" "Use the hill!" One Atom even said, "Hey, I like your hair!" as a girl with intricate braids strode past. Such is the bond of those who crave such "punishment."

Some shirts, Dobrzanski said, are kind of "snotty." We found some of those, too, although there can be a fine line between snotty and amusing. At the Heritage tent, freshmen Britney Cook, Vanessa Gatch, Grace Foulke, Kara Sheehan and Aiola Stoja were straddling that line with their "Our Mascara Runs Faster Than You" shirt. They liked its combination of femininity, grit and humor.

Stone Bridge sophomore Amy Walther wore a yellow shirt declaring, in her handwriting, "Running is like mouthwash . . . the more it's burning the better it's working." Walther has another shirt that says, "If I'm going to run cross-country, I'm going to start with a small country."

"I like the ones that are funny and kind of joke about cross-country," Walther said as she bided her time before her race. "It is such an individual sport, but then yet you're a team doing it. It's all about you -- you're working on your own. It's kind of a way to get you excited to run your race because you're wearing your shirt at the beginning."

Sherwood High School junior Lindsay Blank perused the Web to find sayings for her team's shirt. She and her teammates settled on "Some people follow their dreams, others hunt them down and beat them mercilessly into submission." Gee, she seemed so mild-mannered.

"Most games in other sports, you're playing one other team," Blank said. "In cross-country, at this meet, I think there are about 70 teams, and there are a lot of different shirts and you want to make your team [distinctive] -- oh, there's Sherwood, or oh, there's Walter Johnson . . . when they see your shirt. That's important."

In an informal poll, the most popular shirts at Oatlands were those worn by several Loudoun County High School runners: "We're Bringing XC Back," a takeoff on the Justin Timberlake lyric "I'm bringing sexy back" from the song "SexyBack."

"It's kind of popular right now, so we might as well do it while it's popular," senior Sarah Cunningham said, relaxing in a lawn chair outside the team tent with senior Kate Glennon.

In explaining how the T-shirts fit into the framework of cross-country, with runners having individual goals while being part of something bigger, one of the girls motioned to sophomore teammate Julie Strange. Strange placed third in the Varsity B race and posted a time about four minutes faster than what the two seniors managed in their junior-varsity event over the 3.1-mile course.

"She runs to win," Cunningham said of Strange.

"We race," Glennon chimed in with a smile, "so we can eat whatever we want."

And, maybe, to wear cool T-shirts.

Varsity Letter is a weekly column about high school sports in the Washington area.