By Taylor Eldridge

Another weekly feature that will take us inside an area program with the coach. There aren’t many teams that can claim to be building a dynasty. But Campus can most certainly lay claim to that after strong finishes at the state meet in recent years. But the Colts weren’t always a perennial favorite. Actually, quite the opposite.

Find out how Campus coach Rick Curless took over his alma mater and turned the Colts around in such a short period of time. Find out how much emphasis on the team aspect of cross country really helps the program. And even for a good laugh, find out Curless’ favorite TV show. Click the jump to find out.

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• So what was it like at Campus before and when you first arrived there?

“This is my seventh team at Campus. They were really, really bad when I came down. In fact, there wasn’t even enough cross country boys for a team. I had to borrow some soccer players just to have a team to compete. So really, this is my first really excellent year that we had. Now Campus has had past tradition back through the 70s and maybe even early 80s under a coach named Leon Stranathan. So there was tradition there and I ran in that program and I wasn’t one of the better runners by any stretch of the imagination. I was a basketball guy. Back in the 70s you did three sports. You were expected to. But there were a lot of outstanding runners that came through Campus cross country in the 70s through coach Stranathan. Then of course he left the program and it was a swinging door of coaches and the program really went down. And especially whenever they brought soccer into the school. That just seemed to really kill the cross country program. It was just kind of a challenge to me to take the challenge of rebuilding what used to be a very proud program at Campus High with my teammates and myself to try to build it back. With just a lot of great, great boys that have taken the challenge on, the boys have turned the corner and they’ve turned it into what I think is one of the best cross country programs in the state of Kansas.”

• How did you make cross country a sport that would appeal to high schoolers when you first got there? How difficult was it to just fill out a team?
  

“I had to sell them on several things. First off, that it was going to be make – no matter what sport they were interested in, probably with the exception of golf – that cross country was going to make them a better athlete. Number two, I wanted to sell them on if they wanted to make a difference – What do they want their personal legacy to be while they’re at Campus High School – that this is an ideal situation. You can do something that is very, very important for the school, but also something that is very, very large for the Haysville community in turning this program around. What really helped was the hiring of middle school coach, coach Chris Shipman. He’s an El Dorado product, so he’d come out of a very successful program and we mixed our summer programs. So we give the kids an opportunity to work out together. Everything from 6th grade to high school in the summer time and they look at it as not just as running and getting better, but it’s really where they get to see their friends and it’s a camaraderie thing. For the boys, it’s been a real positive camaraderie.  and something that they all love to do. They like to work out. They like to run. The summer program has paid huge dividends and I want to credit the middle school coach, coach Shipman, with really finding all of these talented boys and working them hard, so it’s not a process when they leave one program and go right into the high school program.”

• You guys lost four out of the top seven from last season’s third place team at State. Now you’re right back up there in the mix this season. How did you reload so quickly?

“It’s a proud tradition and we set the bar very, very high. The bar is set not only in the performance in running, but I want to challenge them to be the best student they can be and make the best decisions and choices as a person. And I think it’s just the growth of boys into young men, as well as the running part. These young boys want to be challenged. They want to be part of something that is positive. Not only winning, but something that they feel is very, very positive. That they can relate to. That they’re proud of. They’re proud of putting on the jersey. It does mean more than just running. I think that the Campus cross country program, it means more to these boys than just their performance. And they reloaded because they’ve been sold on hard work. It’s not that they’re genetically talented more than the other schools. They’re not. We don’t have great speed. We don’t have Robbie Garcia’s down here that can run a 4:18 mile. We don’t. But what we do have is our strength is in our team and that’s in numbers. They work very, very hard and they run in the mornings and int he summer time, they run all summer. Some of them even, in late July, put in 2-a-days. They run almost every morning at 6 a.m. and then again after school. If we don’t out-work our opponents, we’re not going to beat them. I know every school thinks they work hard and they do and I’m not taking anything away. Cross country is a hard sport, but hopefully it’s a buy-in process to run at Campus High. It means a lot down here in this Haysville community now. It means a lot to be a cross country runner. That’s important to have that installed in a program.”

• The boys team gets a lot of attention, but I know Ashley Krier is a good girls runner too. Give some love to the girls’ side.

“Ashley is a multi-sport athlete. Soccer is her favorite sport, but she also does basketball and she does cross country. Her and her twin are just multi-sport athletes. They’re awesome, young Christian girls that are very coachable and they just have a great work ethic and just are great for any athletic program. That’s what I think about whenever I think of Ashley. If you get girls like that to go out for three sports and are very coachable, your entire sports program is going to be a huge plus. Instead of specialization and only doing one sport, Ashley is a multi-sport girl and great for Campus High School.”

• I know you guys take the team strategy pretty seriously. I don’t know if many fans understand what goes into the strategy as a team. So take us into a Campus game plan for an upcoming meet.

“The strategy is number one to come for the team. The team placement in how we do at Campus High is the number one goal. Is to win. Our goal is never to go in and take second. We want to win. We feel like we can. Not that we’re going to win every race. We know that’s impossible, but that’s our intention. We don’t go into a race thinking we can’t win it. We want to run the very best and not let our teammates down. You know Brayden (Barrientez) last year. I use this as an example. We took third last year and if Brayden Barrientez could have a choice would you rather have your team win 6A state and you give up your individual title? Absolutely yes. The team is the most important thing in a successful program. If you don’t have – even though it’s an individual sport – if the utmost thing on that team is truly not the team’s finish, then you’re going to have other people that don’t care about supporting that superstar attitude. They really don’t want to run fast for him or her because they know they’re out for their individual accolade. But when they see the leader and they are truly wanting the team to do the best they can, then the kids that are on the team will step up and do their very, very best. That is what we base our foundation of our team on: team, not individual. I can truly say that. Individual accolades will come. We’re not going to worry about that. We want to win the race as a team. That’s our goal going into very race we run.”

• Time for your shot at the question: what makes cross country such an unique sport?

“All the individuals have total control on the outcome of your team. It’s you against nature. In cross country you battle everything. As far as the weather here in Kansas, you battle the heat and huminity. You battle the cold, the wind, the mud, the stickers. There isn’t any element of weather that a Kansas cross country runner doesn’t face. You have to be brutally strong and ready for sometimes a flat course, sometimes a hilly course. It’s you against nature and the environment. No other sports have such an uncontrolled environment. Every other sport you pretty much know. If it’s an indoor sport, you know what you’re going to have. If it’s an outdoor sport, you know what surface you’re going to be playing on. But in cross country, you have to be ready for anything and everything in Kansas. I think that some of the bond that all runners have is in that toughness, that mental toughness, that a distance runner has to have in order to compete in this sport.”

• So earlier you said you had a background in basketball. How did you get in as a cross country coach?

“Believe it or not, I ran it in high school because at that time my basketball coach insisted that all the basketball players did either football or cross country. So I had a background in it and I enjoyed the camaraderie tremendously in high school. Now how I got involved in coaching is I got hired at Wichita West High School and they had a really, really bad cross country team. And the job opened up and nobody applied. So the principal at that time was Jay Nusey and he put the pressure on me to take the cross country program because nobody had applied for it and nobody wanted the job. So I got it by default. That’s how I got hired because nobody else wanted it. We built that program, the boys and the girls, to where it was a very proud program. And then I came to Campus that way too. Because nobody applied for the Campus job whenever it opened up. I got it by default because absolutely nobody applied for it or wanted the job. So I got two coaching jobs in cross country and they’ve been  a major blessing in my life. I really enjoyed the 10 years coaching at Wichita West and the inner-city kids that I coached. It was a great experience and coming back to my alma mater and seeing the program grow and the program turn into what it’s becoming, it’s just a great appreciation for both schools. It wasn’t that I was good that I got the jobs, it was I was the only one that applied for it.”

• Bryant Keirns has really stepped up this year, only as a sophomore, and become the team’s number one. People looking for his name last year won’t find it anywhere, why is that?

Bryant only ran one race last year because he was hurt. I only had him for one race. He had a stress fracture on his foot. That was a huge and unfortunate loss for us. So that’s why he wasn’t state-known last year. He’s always been a very talented runner and a very disciplined kid. He set all the records at Haysville middle school. He crushed a lot of the distance runners that were some of his teammates that had the records. He’s been an outstanding runner, but why people didn’t hear about him last year was because he ran only one race, the first race of the year. He was our third finisher that day and he ran a 17:08 in his first varsity race as a freshman. And then he was out fort he season. And even though he came back for track season, he was far from 100 percent. That’s why people didn’t hear about him last year. He is a very humble and did learn a lot from Brayden. They’re still best of buddies. They still keep in contact a lot. He goes to church there with the Barrientez’s and he’s just been mentored very, very well by Brayden.”

• What needs to happen from today until State for you guys to win state?

“We have to have every boy get better and do the maximum best they’re capable of doing. It’s not one or two boys getting a lot better. It’s really our top six runners all getting better. Whatever that limit is. Don’t set limitations. Don’t say, ‘Well gosh, if I ever run in the 16s, that’s as good as I’ll get.’ Don’t set limitations. Take every workout and make yourself better. After every race evaluate what you did right that week and what you need to improve on and be totally focused on yourself. I mean on making yourself better. Don’t worry if you’re the number one or the number six runner. Just because we don’t know what you’re going to be at the end at state. Just make yourself the best you can be.”

Quick hitters

• Favorite course besides Rim Rock: Topeka Seaman
• Favorite post-race meal: Fettuccine
• Favorite TV show: The Sean Hannity Show
• Gatorade or Water: Water
• How many Campus runners in the top-30 at state: 6