Harding brings spear, high hopes to national meet
Posted on Friday, November 21, 2008
SEARCY — The spear was Julius Kosgei’s idea.
To hear Kosgei explain it, a spear means having something worth protecting. It means feeling connected enough with those around you to stand between them and any threat from the outside world.
That line of thinking is right up Kosgei’s alley. And if it means the Harding University men’s cross country team gets more than a few stares when it arrives at meets carrying a large spear, that’s just fine.
“In Kenya, the spear is what you use as a matter of defending yourself,” said Kosgei, a senior and one of four Kenyans on the roster. “If you have the spear, no enemy can threaten you.”
At least as far as running is concerned, no one has threatened the Bisons.
Hardly anyone has even caught the Bisons. Harding heads to Slippery Rock, Pa., for Saturday’s NCAA Division II cross country championships with an outside shot at winning a national title.
While Bisons Coach Steve Guymon said “everyone’s got to run perfect” to topple national powers like Abilene Christian and Chico State, perfection is something the Bisons are used to.
Thanks to undefeated freshman Daniel Kirwa, another Kenyan, Harding is 7 for 7 in individual titles this season. As a team, the Bisons have claimed both the Gulf South Conference and Division II South Regional titles, recording a perfect team score in the Gulf South championships by placing five runners in the top five.
Even by the standards of collegiate running, where foreign addresses are common, the Harding roster is a mishmash of American and international cultures. Stateside, the Bisons sport athletes from Chicago to Alabama to Connecticut. Beyond American borders, Harding has two Polish runners to go with the four Kenyans.
Guymon, previously an assistant coach at Kansas and head coach at Cordova (Tenn. ) High School, was encouraged to maintain a foreign pipeline after replacing former Harding Coach Bryan Phillips six years ago.
The challenge for Guymon hasn’t been finding the athletes — connections from the Phillips regime plus Harding’s overseas missionary work laid the groundwork before his arrival — but rather finding athletes who can compete at the national level while fitting in at a school with strict codes of moral and spiritual conduct.
Guymon has managed that. An added bonus that he didn’t count on was what he called the “great amount of fun” that resulted from watching a team separated by language, background and culture form friendships that will last far beyond college.
Sometimes, that coming together meant recognizing the realities of life on a continent scarred by war and poverty. When Polish runner Artur Kern went with Kosgei to his home of Timboroa, Kenya, last Christmas, the two were forced to flee the city because of violence resulting from a recent political election.
“I was not so much worried,” Kosgei said. “If it were a matter of going to war, I would go. But for him, he was kind of worried.”
Meanwhile, the arrival of Kirwa, who is expected to battle Chico State junior Scott Bauhs for the individual national title, has taught the foreign runners a very American concept: taking a lesser role for the good of the team.
“I used to be maybe No. 1,” said senior James Cheruiyot, another Kenyan.
“It’s not good to have one runner who’s No. 1 and another runner who’s No. 100. You need all the runners to pull closer together.”
In doing so, the Bisons, spear in hand, have spent a season pulling away from the field.
“None of us are from here, so we form our own family,” Kosgei said. “And people from the same family walk together.”
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