Optimism, unity drive Sandpoint cross-country amidst high expectations

Gabe Christman wants to tell you something.

It’s evident first in the intensity of his eye contact, then in the natural enthusiasm of his voice and finally in the way the syllables tumble out of his mouth, slowly at first, before picking up speed and staccato as his sentences surge into an epiphany about how well he thinks the Sandpoint cross-country team is going to do this fall. Get him talking about his team and an unmistakable enthusiasm emerges — it’s almost like he’s seconds away from spilling some grand secret.

He’s not as breathless when he talks about running cross-country as when he is actually running cross-country. But it’s close.

“We’re all so positive and together,” Christman said after the first of Sandpoint’s two preseason time trials on Aug. 14. “It was kind of intimidating when I came on as a freshman. There were all these people who were so close and positive, and I had never been on a team like that before. But as you get older, it becomes more like a family. We’re always together doing everything and we’re super tight. In racing, you get this camaraderie and brotherhood with everyone. It’s a lot of fun. Hard work definitely makes connections like that.”

The earnest positivity in Christman’s voice doesn’t hint at the tribulations he has endured in order to reach his senior cross-country season.

A promising freshman season gave way to a litany of injuries and illnesses that have put him on a stationary bike instead of on the state course.

While he could have stepped away at any time, Christman kept coming back to the sport because he valued his fellow Sandpoint cross-country teammates that much.

He didn’t want to quit on them.

“The only reason I stuck with it so much is because of all the people on that team; I didn’t want to let them down,” Christman said. “It wasn’t anything for me at that point. I felt like if I stopped, it would show everyone else that they didn’t have to go all the way or put in their best efforts.”

Head coaches Matt and Angie Brass rewarded Christman’s perseverance with a varsity captain’s role before the season started, then Christman did the rest. For the first time since his freshman season, the senior put in a full summer of training uninhibited by injuries or illnesses, then proceeded to break his 1600 meter and 5K personal bests in the preseason time trials.

Same goes for senior Bionce Vincent, who managed to set a new PR at Jacey’s Race: a charity 5K that several of the varsity runners either helped facilitate or participated in this past July.

As far as preseason returns go, having a senior disrupt the boys team’s top three, coupled with one of the top two girls returners dip under 21 minutes has been enough for the program to be optimistic about the fall.

“Angie [Brass] says all the time that you’ll do so much more for the team than for yourself,” Vincent said. “And while there are those days where you don’t feel as motivated, I think I’m not going to make my team better — and I’m not going to get better — if I am not consistent and don’t put in the work.”

That consistency and hard work in face of adversity is present across the board.

It’s found in the way junior Camille Neuder bounced back from lingering knee issues to break the 22-minute barrier in the 5K and earn a varsity role.

It’s in the growth rising sophomores Ben Ricks and Trey Clark have made, going from unpredictable JV runners into varsity distance runners whom take pride in racing.

It’s in the way the girls team is quick to give rising sophomore Megan Oulman the spotlight for her work, going so far as saying she’s due for a breakout season. Angie Brass says she’s a “brand new runner;”

Oulman’s teammates have also taken note.

“She has been working hard since day one and I’m very proud of that girl,” Vincent said. “She has the mental toughness and although she has a ways to go, she’s starting at a very good spot. It’s amazing to see the amount of girls and the quality of people — I mean, we have such great people.”

That relationship between runners who give and receive the praise goes both ways.

Egos take on different forms in a sport that is inherently about breaking oneself down — trimming one’s body into a leaner frame while doing a solitary sport during strange hours in the day — yet Sandpoint’s cross-country team’s top returners strike a balance between acknowledging the work they have put in, while also deferring to the greater good.

“I’ve just feel like we’re all sisters and that we’re so close,” Oulman said. “That’s what keeps me going because I know that they’re going to push themselves just as hard for me as I will for them.”

That balance between teammate, competitor and friend will be tested over on the boys’ side. Bulldogs juniors Nikolai Braedt and Jett Lucas are both on the heels of breaking the track program’s sophomore 1600 meter record this past spring.

They’re close in more ways than one. The tandem was seven-hundredths of a second at the 4A state track meet, are often stride-for-strike in workouts and was awarded a photo-finish tie in the 1600 at the District 1 track meet.

Predictably, they are gunning for the program’s 5K record this fall, where they think Lewiston and Sandpoint’s home meet in mid-October will be their best shots at rewriting the record book before state.

“If I didn’t have the team around me, there’s no way I’d be close to where I am right now,” Braedt said. “Having Jett there, having someone always there for me and to push me is really how I get the times I get. I think at first it was hard before I knew him well. Once we started to get really close, it became this really healthy relationship where we know that we’re pushing each other and we know we both want it, but we know that we can’t achieve it without each other.”

“We keep each other in check,” Lucas added. “It’s really inspiring and invigorating, but at the same time, it’s almost scary. There’s this friendly competitiveness that just drives everyone to their best. We’re all friends and we’re all really close, so we aren’t going to develop hatred for each other if they beat you in a race or something. We all met in season and the friendship grew throughout the season in both the workouts and all the time we spent together. Then it blossomed from there.”

Rising senior Seth Graham will be in the mix of the juniors as well. Sandpoint’s boys cross-country coach Matt Brass lauded the senior’s body of work and momentum over the past calendar year, in which he went from running a 2:08 to a 1:59 in the 800 throughout the course of one track season, then used that newfound confidence to

“I don’t think either of us [coaches] can express the importance of being able to making state,” Brass said. “During track you can really focus on getting faster and when you see those times start to drop, you gain a confidence and you know what you’re able to do. Then you’re able to look and say things like, ‘This guy who I ran with in cross, I just beat him in the state mile.’ You gain confidence in where you are in the grand scheme of things, state-wide.”

Graham has taken that fifth-place finish in the 800 and used it as a motivator throughout the training season — even if he jokes that a 5K is, in his words, “4,200 meters too long.”

“When I was at state, my biggest worry was that if I underperformed, I wouldn’t have any confidence going into the summer for training and cross,” Graham said. “But I think what the end of track did was it gave me a lot of confidence to keep going through the summer. It reminded me how talented our team is and how much we can do in cross season.”

The boys are northern Idaho’s best shot at breaking up the monopoly held by the southern Idaho schools.

And while the girls lose several key seniors from last year’s class, there is a bevy of young talent in Ara Clark, rising sophomore Mackenzie Suhr-Gregoire and the aforementioned Oulman in order to not only gun for their seventh-straight district cross country title, but also gain enough experience at the state meet for the team to build upon for the future.

“Seeing all those girls was kind of intimidating — especially from the southern part of the state,” Oulman said, recalling the state met last fall. “They’re all really tall and they have long strides. I felt pretty confident and comfortable because I know I had my girls with me and I knew they were going to push me and I knew I was going to conquer anything as long as I had them with me.

Momentum on the girls’ side is rising. Several larger senior classes have since moved on, yet Angie Brass has made a recruiting push, bringing in more newcomers than usual this year in order to strengthen the girls’ side.

Yet the future will have to wait.

For now, seniors like Christman, Graham, Vincent and fellow senior captain Paige Davidson are embracing the moment, making one last push towards giving the team a state experience they think it deserves.

“I feel like I’ve been with all of them forever,” Vincent, who spent her freshman season living in Hawai’i before moving up to Sandpoint for her sophomore year, said. “This team is so enriching in all ways. Counting down these moments, I feel like I’m trying to make every moment count.”