'I JUST DIDN'T THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN'

CCCC coaches, runners grapple with the lack of a 2020 cross country season

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Next weekend, runners from junior and community colleges across the southeast will flock to Martinsville, Virginia, for the Region 10 Championships and a chance to qualify for nationals.

But the Central Carolina Community College Cougars, who’ve sent three runners to the Division III championships in two years, won’t be represented at either. A canceled season will do that to you.

“Everything happens for a reason,” head coach Richard Briggs said, “I firmly believe in that. What that reason is right now? I’m not sure.”

It’s been three months since CCCC — which has Chatham, Lee and Harnett county campuses — decided it wouldn’t field a cross country team this fall, despite its parent organization, the National Junior College Athletic Association, announcing the sport could continue as scheduled in 2020.

The school’s administration and athletic department “just didn’t feel comfortable putting our student-athletes at that risk,” athletic director Jonathan Hockaday told the News + Record then.

“We hated to do it to our (cross country) student-athletes who committed to come here,” he said.

As postseason competition approaches, Briggs and sophomore runner Anna Trotter are both staying positive. But as schools around them march on, they can’t help but hurt a little, too, when they think about what could’ve been for the Cougars — if it weren’t a decision made above them.

“It really broke my heart,” Trotter, a 2019 Northwood graduate, said.

“This year, I really believe, was going to be our breakout year,” Briggs added. “So to see it not come together the way I was thinking it would, it’s definitely disappointing.”

Briggs, 45, is a self-made coach from New Jersey who used previous stops at UNC-Wilmington, Mount Olive and Fayetteville State to land the CCCC head coaching job last March.

He inherited a program that, in its inaugural 2018 season, saw Jordan-Matthews graduate Britt Lehman qualify for the NJCAAA Division III men’s championships. Briggs hit the recruiting trail hard in the spring and kept his 2019 squad busy with summer workouts and a preseason team-bonding kayak trip.

And the results showed.

After three regular season meets, CCCC burst onto the scene at the Region 10 Championships in Spartanburg, South Carolina, last November. Trotter finished first in the Division III women’s 5K race, with a time of 23:34, and Colby Day finished fourth in the Division III men’s 8K, with a time of 32:59.

Both freshmen qualified for the NJCAA Division III championships in Westfield, Massachusetts, too.

“And when I made nationals, I thought: ‘Wow, I can’t wait to see what this whole team can do next year,’” Trotter said.

Since CCCC doesn’t have an indoor track or outdoor track team, Briggs encourages his athletes to use the winter and spring to focus on other interests: academics, clubs, other sports. He usually ramps up formal preseason training in the summer — this year, despite COVID-19, that was still the case.

“I was going along as if we were going to have a season,” Briggs said. “I was sending out my training to everyone. I had the in-season training ready to go. I had a full schedule as far as competition. I had a team (bonding) meetings set to go. Everything like that.”

In the team’s group chat, Trotter said she remembered one message from Briggs, alerting his players that canceling the season remained an option for CCCC. But still, she said, his mid-July message that the season had been canceled felt “really out of nowhere.”

“It was an option,” she said, “but I just didn’t think it would happen.”

Outside of the obvious impacts, CCCC’s status as a community college also added a wrinkle.

Most students, including athletes, attend the school for two years before transferring. “Sophomore night” is to a community college what “senior night” is to a standard high school or college. And although CCCC’s 2020 runners can all return next season, it’s not logical for many.

“Unfortunately, we’re going to lose some people,” Briggs said.

Trotter, for example, is in the Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program, which guarantees her admission to UNC-Chapel Hill if she meets certain criteria, which she’s well on track for.

A 2021 CCCC cross country season doesn’t mesh well with her plan to spend her junior and senior years of college at UNC. Other sophomores, such as Day and Jordan-Matthews graduates Eddy Dominguez and George Jacinto, are in the same boat, riding a wave of uncertainty.

“I was really looking forward to a second year,” Trotter said. “What more can I do? Can I get my time down to 21 (minutes)? Can I get even faster? Who else am I going to meet? I’ll really miss that.”

The changes have Briggs, optimist he is, embracing what’s essentially a dual recruiting challenge.

He’s actively seeking runners for his class of 2022, as per usual. But he’s also staying in touch with his class of 2021 runners, who were supposed to run for him as freshmen in 2020.

Since that never happened, and the team hasn’t formally met in months, it’s almost like he’s “starting over” with them, he said. And if he pulls together the full 2021 roster he’s expecting to, Briggs thinks the Cougars can compete for a regional championship and more in their third season.

“It’s all coming together the way it is for a reason,” he said. “I’m really excited for next year.”

Trotter never thought she’d miss the team’s 7:30 a.m. runs at Kiwanis Family Park in Sanford. But as she works through a heavy academic load this semester, she sometimes does. At least, she said, her final race as a Cougar was a good one: she represented CCCC at 2019 nationals — the first woman runner to do so — and finished 46th out of 122 runners.

“I found such a wonderful meaning in running,” Trotter said. “At CCCC, running wasn’t about the awards or the times. It was about working as team while pushing yourself … it’s nice I got to leave cross country on a positive note.”

Reporter Chapel Fowler can be reached at cfowler@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @chapelfowler.