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Cross country comes second for most at Zephyrhills

 
Published Sept. 14, 2000|Updated Sept. 27, 2005

(ran PC edition)

It's a good thing other sports are offered at Zephyrhills. Otherwise there might not be a boys cross country team.

"I don't have a single, what I would call, long-distance runner," coach Mike Stanton said. "They're all wrestlers, or basketball players, or soccer players."

Or baseball players, as is the case with Justin Marchese, the Bulldogs' top runner.

"If he allowed himself to train year-round, he'd be a state qualifier," Stanton said of Marchese, a .300 hitter as a pitcher and outfielder for the Zephyrhills junior varsity baseball team last year. "He's baseball, baseball."

For now, though, Marchese is focused on lowering his times to the 16-minute range and making a bid for the state meet.

"Baseball is the main thing, but cross country, I can do it. I enjoy it," Marchese said.

Last Friday, Marchese was the first Bulldog across the finish line in the Mitchell Invitational. He placed third overall in 19:27, helping Zephyrhills to a second-place finish.

Stanton and Marchese agree that he could have done better.

"I started out wrong," Marchese said. "I went too fast. I should have listened to my coach."

Stanton urged Marchese to keep pace with the front-runners and to stay in control before picking it up later in the first of three miles. Marchese plans to heed that advice in his next race.

A Sunshine Athletic Conference honorable mention as a freshman, who ran third on the team and did not qualify for the regionals, Marchese opted for football over cross country last year. But he said he did not like getting tackled, which led to a return to cross country.

"Cross country is better for me," said Marchese, a 6-foot-3, 155-pound junior. "I do it, one, for my conditioning, and, two, because my dad was a cross country runner."

Marchese trains weekdays with the Bulldogs and runs with his father, Mike, once or twice a week. He enjoys the time they spend together and takes pleasure in beating the 45-year-old former cross country runner and minor league baseball player at the end of their 5-mile jaunts.

"He's always telling me about his stories and I beat him bad," Marchese said.

Zephyrhills' No. 2 and No. 3 runners are freshman Chris Mira and senior Dan Conley, the only runner who does not play another sport at Zephyrhills.

Mira, a soccer player, was the second Bulldog to cross the line in the Mitchell Invitational, coming in eighth at 20:20.

"He's my little ninth-grade phenom," Stanton said. "He's probably about 5-3, 110 (pounds) soaking wet."

Conley, who placed 10th overall (20:50) at the Mitchell race, still is recovering from shin splints that slowed him last year. Stanton is limiting Conley's running to twice a week, hoping he will be faster by the end of the season.

Zephyrhills' other runners are captain Richard Kazbour, who plays basketball, and wrestler Nick Spine. They finished 17th and 18th, respectively, at Mitchell.

Zephyrhills' second-place showing among five teams at Mitchell led to Stanton's optimistic outlook for the season.

"It let me know that I have a team capable of qualifying for regionals," he said.