Cross Country Update: Trevor Sytsma
9/1/2015 8:40:00 AM | Cross Country, Competing With Purpose Blog
Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Trevor Sytsma, and I'm a freshman from Seattle, Washington, in my first season of Pepperdine cross country. I committed to Pepperdine for four reasons: the school's phenomenal Christian mission, its successful pre-medicine program, its cross country brotherhood and coach Robert Radnoti, who promised to be not just my running coach, but my life coach as well. You could say the nearly 60:40 female-to-male ratio and 180-degree view of the Pacific Ocean helped too.
I've only been on campus for about two weeks, and my expectations of each of those factors have already been met and even exceeded. But it wasn't until I returned from training at altitude at our preseason camp at Lake Tahoe from August 17-22 that I realized a fourth reason why I'm so grateful to be here.
Asa cross country team, we are underdogs.
Last year, Pepperdine's men's cross country team placed ninth out of nine teams at the West Coast Conference Championships. That may be attributed to the fact that last year, the entire team was composed of freshmen and sophomores; or due to the fact that Nick Blanchard, our top runner, was injured for the entire season. Nevertheless, we begin this season as the last-place team in our conference.
But that means that the only direction we can go is up. And at nearly 6,000 feet at Lake Tahoe, we began to lay the foundation for a championship mentality so we can do just that. We started each day with a 6:30 a.m. wake-up in order to board the bus for the morning's beautiful running location. The week saw us running 10 miles along the shores of South Lake Tahoe, 5 x 1 mile repeats at a local high school, speed drills, a 6-mile tempo run at Grover Hot Springs, and a 14 miler along a hilly power-line trail.
You could say that after a tough morning workout, we would be justified in just hanging out at our hotel and chilling at the local Jamba Juice for the rest of the day. But as Coach Radnoti told us: that's just not what champions do. So we stretched out our lactic-acid-filled legs on three afternoon hikes up to three stunningly pristine lakes in the mountains surrounding Lake Tahoe,cliff-jumping at one, swimming to a small island in the middle of another, and bouldering up a rocky face at the last to discuss our team goals atop an off-trail peak. We shared meaningful experiences and conversations in these excursions that began to shape our mentality as a team this season. For myself and my fellow newcomers, we were drawn into the brotherhood by the end of the trip.
I said earlier that I'm grateful to be on an underdog team. It means that I have the opportunity to be part of a program that is only going to grow significantly in the next few years, and help lay the foundation for what will hopefully one day be a national championship team. Preseason camp at Tahoe set us in the right direction, and I'm excited to see just what we can accomplish with the goals we've set for ourselves.
Players Mentioned
