It's difficult to pick the two best runners on American Fork's roster, but these two are plenty to handle. Photos by Alan Versaw.
The meet management wasn't distributing results, but nobody needed them to determine who the winner was. Even if they'd gone by too fast to read the name on front, we all knew it was the team in the bright orange uniforms that had won the meet.
It's hard not to notice when a team's entire scoring roster finishes in the top 20.
This year, the drama at NXN-SW was reserved for the girls' race and the battle for second and third in the boys' race. Never has a team dominated NXN-SW as American Fork did last Saturday.
By the standards of most people reading this article, Utah is not a populous state. What population there is in Utah settles along the base of a range of mountains known as the Wasatch Front. Utah's three major metropolitan areas--Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Provo--are dwarfed by the towering mountains to the east. Few cities in the world boast such a dramatic backdrop as these.
About midway between Salt Lake City and Provo is a city of roughly 30,000 people known as American Fork. And that is where this story takes us.
It isn't easy to rise to the top in Utah cross country. Utah is a state that enjoys a cross country tradition way out of proportion to its population.
Prior to 2009, American Fork had never won a Utah state title in cross country--in boys or girls. That sort of notoriety was reserved for schools like Fremont, Mountain View, Bingham, Davis, and Timpview. Several of these programs have enjoyed lofty national rankings at one time or another.
But the seeds of change began to germinate about five or six years ago. A mention in Marc Bloom's pre-season rankings here, a state runner-up finish there. A 2007 sophomore with leadership skills named Robby Lee. It wasn't exactly Hoosiers in racing flats, but there were rumblings of things to come.
In that year of 2007, American Fork would finish second in the Utah state meet and 10th of 17 teams in the first NXN-SW (then NTN-SW) regional championship. Robby Lee would finish 49th at NTN-SW in 16:35. He wasn't first on the team, but he was setting the tone that would shape this team into something more than it was on that day.
The fire was lit.
Next year, after another second at state, the American Fork team was back at NXN-SW. This time they moved up to fourth with sophomore Austin West running 16:03 and junior Robby Lee running 16:10, placing 30th and 36th, respectively. The Cavemen were clearly competitive but still lacking a strong presence up front that could challenge the elite squads from Albuquerque Academy and Alta (that year's qualifiers to Nike Cross Nationals).
Somewhere between November of 2008 and September of 2009, the dam broke.
After a dazzling invitational season in 2009, American Fork didn't just win the state meet, they crushed the field, winning with only 36 points, 50 points ahead of second-place Pleasant Grove. American Fork boasted three of the top five finishers at state in Austin West, Clayton Young, and Robby Lee.
And they came to Tempe for NXN-SW with just a little bit of swagger in their stride.
Their season got just a little bit better when American Fork slipped by Albuquerque Academy, the traditional SW powerhouse franchise, for the regional title. The win came on a tie-breaker at the #6 position. A young man named Ashenafe Richardson who had just started running the summer before and was still learning the ropes of putting together a competitive race did the deed. Richardson finished 11 seconds ahead of Albuquerque Academy's sixth runner to complete what the first five had started.
And, for the first time since American Fork started making the trip to Arizona, there was no lack of a presence up front. Austin West finished 6th at 15:35, Clayton Young 11th in 15:52, and Robby Lee 15th in 16:01. The Cavemen were no longer playing catch-up after the first two runners crossed the finish line.
Two weeks later, however, Albuquerque Academy would turn the tables on American Fork at NXN. The New Mexico team finished fifth, 11 points ahead of American Fork in eighth. American Fork looked a little bit like a team without a lot of experience on a Nike Cross Nationals kind of stage.
But with five of the seven returning from that 2009 NXN team, they had the nation's attention. In boys' cross country, maturity matters and American Fork had made it to within shouting distance of the top with only two seniors.
Robby Lee would graduate off that team, but the rest of the team was now ready to pick up the slack.
Since last December, the American Fork boys broadened their big meet exposure with trips to Simplot, Great Southwest, their own state meets, and, of course, yet another trip to NXN-SW. Confidence is at high tide. Nerves are diminished.
American Fork is no longer a stranger to big meet kind of pressure.
Junior Clayton Young observed, "It's a huge difference in being familiar with the course, the weather, the altitude, and racing with all those fast teams and fast guys." Last year, all those factors were unknowns. This year, American Fork can claim familiarity on each of these counts.
In many accounts of championship teams there comes a critical point in the season that shapes the character of a team, a point that forces them to a new and higher level. Coach Timo Mostert is inclined to think it's been more of a process with American Fork, "At High Altitude Camp in July the boys made out their goals for the season. Each time they accomplished an intermediate goal, it gave them more confidence that the big goals were attainable. They've certainly learned through their experiences this season, especially with the injuries we've had, that each boy has to take ownership for his part in the team's success."
This is a team that has learned a great deal about both how to handle its own success and how to navigate the inevitable troughs. It is not a team prone to riding the roller coaster of emotional highs and lows.
Even so, the extent of American Fork's domination at NXN-SW caught Mostert somewhat off guard, "With all the great programs in our region, it was a little bit of a surprise."
But, neither was something out of the blue, "The boys did set some very high goals for the meet, of which some were met and some weren't. They were happy with their performance, but not satisfied."
American Fork's performance at NXN-SW is all the more noteworthy in light of the fact that it came exactly one full month after the Utah state meet.
"To have the 2nd earliest state meet in the Nation does make it tough. With six-and-a-half weeks from state to NXN, that places state only half way through our competitive season. Last year after the season ended, some of the boys remarked how hard it was to keep their racing edge that they had gained during the season and how tough it was to keep focus when you are just training. We try to break up the training monotony with a time trial, a small race, and some games like Ultimate or football."
Whatever the recipe, it has worked to near perfection thus far as American Fork outpointed second-place Fort Collins 44 - 91. That kind of domination in a boys' NXN regional is almost unheard of.
And the Southwest is a region positioned very nicely for an at-large bid this year. American Fork didn't beat up on a patsy of a region.
So, on this team of overachievers, who is the "top gun" on the team? That's not an easy question to answer.
The team has six captains. While that reveals something about nature of the team, it does little to reveal who brings the heaviest artillery to the meet.
Senior Austin West was clearly up front until a stress fracture took six weeks out of his season.
"It was torturous; I might as well have chopped my legs off."
West concedes his race isn't back to 100% yet, but each day brings it a step or two closer. His biggest struggle? "I think it's my form. It hasn't come back completely yet, My lungs feel fine, it's just trying to get my legs to move with them."
The legs moved well enough for a 15:49 and 20th place in a field of nearly 300 at NXN-SW. But he was still only the fifth man on the team.
In West's absence, Clayton Young was the first to step up for the Cavemen, posting a nice run of meet titles along the way.
But American Fork also got a big lift from senior Ashenafe Richardson, the same one who broke the tie with Albquerque Academy at the 2009 NXN-SW meet.
Richardson was at front of the race late in the Utah state meet until two girls darted across the course without seeing Richardson and sent the race leader sprawling. Richardson would end up fourth with teammates Clayton Young and junior MacKenzie Morrison going 1-2. Austin West was sixth and Derek Day eighth. Amazingly, running against the top competition in the state, the scoring for American Fork closed at eighth place.
American Fork also obliterated the state meet combined team time record by more than 90 seconds. It was, incidentally, their own team time mark from 2009 that they took down.
It is beyond question that the progression of the season is building memories and adding shape to the challenges that seven young men will be equipped to face later in life.
Ten to twenty years down the road, senior Derek Day says he will remember "how hard it was to push it and how fast the workouts were."
And the strength of that kind of memory makes life's highest mountains that much easier to conquer.
The next mountain looming for these seven young men, however, is Nike Cross Nationals. This year, American Fork is well prepared for the challenge.