CROSS COUNTRY PREVIEW Area's best get put to the test in the Suburban League

The 39-team league has become a showcase for the area's top runners.
By JOE SCALZO
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
McDonald cross country coach Chris Rupe remembers running in weekday dual meets in high school.
Thankfully, his runners don't.
"Most of the weekday meets were these piddly little dual or triangular meets that were not conducive to people improving," Rupe said. "They were a joke."
The Suburban League helped change that.
Canfield's Dick Weiss and Boardman's Bruce Brunig formed the cross country league in the mid-1980s as an alternative to Tuesday dual meets.
The league started with less than 10 area teams. It now has 39.
"You get a higher caliber of competition," said league director Ken Jakubec. "It's like a mini-invitational. You average about 75-100 kids per race and you're guaranteed to see a lot of good runners."
Good competition
The league has five meets each season -- four in the regular season and one championship meet. There are four different sites for each regular season meet and the teams are rotated each week.
"We've had to erase some Saturday invitationals because the weekday is so trying," said Rupe, whose team finished behind Maplewood in last year's standings. "That's not a complaint. That's a compliment to the strength of the league."
Just about every school with a cross country team in the tri-county area belongs to the league. Of the five major area leagues with cross country, only Warren Harding, Salem and South Range do not participate.
"People outside the area know about it," said Jakubec, the director for the past seven years. "We get calls from other areas asking how we do this. It's a great way to get everyone involved and promote the sport."
It's also a good value. Each team pays $100 per season, which covers the cost of officials and awards for four regular season races and a league championship meet.
It also includes junior high teams, which run after the varsity.
"You can't beat the price," Jakubec said. "Some of the weekend invitationals cost as much as $300. And that's just for one race."
Getting involved
Unlike invitationals, the league doesn't limit the number of runners from each team that can run. That allows everyone to run against good competition.
"Different people go out for sports for different reasons," Rupe said. "Not everybody can be an elite runner. I'd say the [Suburban League] races are probably best for middle- or back-of-the-pack runners."
College cross country teams usually only seven or eight meets per season, while high school teams run twice that many. The better runners usually use Suburban League meets to focus on race strategy, rather than winning.
"You can definitely learn from every race, but you can't take all 16 of those races really seriously," Rupe said. "Parents sometimes expect their kids to run hard at every meet and hammer out a personal record every time. That's totally unrealistic."
Benefits
But just because the area's best runners might not always run to win, doesn't mean they don't benefit from the races.
"I always run against my competition," said Boardman senior Brittany Durkin, whose team won the girls title last year. "I like the Suburban League because there's a wide variety of teams and you're not always running against the same people."
And it's not just good for the runners. It's also good for the coaches, the parents and the fans.
"Cross country really has come a long way," Rupe said. "We might not have a good perspective on that unless we take a look back to where we were 20 years ago.
"When runners come back and see it now, they realize that cross country has become a sport that really serves its athletes well."
scalzo@vindy.com