Competitive but compassionate, two SPASH runners help a fallen rival reach the finish line
When a top rival stumbled nearing the finish line, two Stevens Point Area Senior High runners could have seen an opportunity for a better finish.
Instead sophomore Cooper Erickson and junior Ethan Olds saw a chance to do a good deed.
In the Neenah Cross Country Invitational on Friday, Seppi Camilli of Marquette, Michigan, was in an all-out sprint while racing against Erickson when he lost his footing and crumpled to the ground. Erickson, nearer to the finish than he was to Camilli by the time he could stop, turned round and went back to offer encouragement and a hand. Then Olds stopped too.
With Erickson guiding Camilli from his left side and Olds on his right, the three ran the remaining steps together before Camilli went down in a heap again.
“These kids specifically are really great kids and they come from great families so they understand helping people,” said SPASH co-head coach Kevin Hopp. “But in the larger scheme, you go to any cross country meet and that’s what you’re going to see, a lot of great kids from a lot of families that are there to look out for other kids.
“They’re competitive. They want to beat each other. But they also want to help each other because they understand how much time and energy every other kid is putting in at that same time. So they understand when somebody has a bad day or gets themselves into a little bit of trouble.”
SPASH had four of the top five individuals at Neenah, with Camilli third behind runaway winner Aloysius Franzen and Olds and ahead of Erickson and junior Andrew Dziak. SPASH won the team title with Marquette second.
Camilli was fine after the race, said Derek Marr, Marquette’s coach, who praised the character of Erickson, Olds and the Stevens Point team.
“Between fatigue and disappointment of not being able to complete the exceptional race he had just executed, he was slow getting back to his feet,” Marr said in an email. “It was kind and a great act of sportsmanship for the two Stevens Point runners to help him up and across the finish line. Those three athletes had competed hard over the last mile and a half of the race, changing places on multiple occasions, it was great to see true competition enacted by the young men.”
With 12 state titles, Stevens Point has historically had one of the best boys cross country programs in Wisconsin.
The Panthers also have a reputation of going the extra mile for people. Longtime head coach Donn Behnke, a state cross country coaches Hall of Famer, wrote “The Animal Keepers,” a book about the 1985 season, when the program took on developmentally disabled student Scott “The Animal” Longley, who lived in a group home and became an integral part of a state champion team.
“I believe it’s part of the culture of our program,” said Hopp, who ran cross country at SPASH. “We are a 7-12 program, so our guys look out for each other because they have little brothers on the team, they have younger teammates they’re looking out for because at one point in time they were the seventh- or eighth-grader on the team that was new to this and someone looked out for them.
“So I do think it’s part of the culture we’ve built, just helping each other out and looking out for each other, not only our teammates but other people in general.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Stevens Point runners give boost to opponent in act of sportsmanship
