Delivered at the 2003 Men's Cross Country National Championship Banquet at the Prince Conference Center

Tim Avery (class of 2004)

Before us lay a field: clumps of green sprouting out above the light layer of snow. Our feet shuffled about anxiously in white-lined rectangles carved to mark out starting boxes. Seven Calvin Knights stood on a line 3,000 miles or more away from Michigan, far from the field house and its dust-gray tiles where we'd stretch and talk of nothing and everything; miles from Manhattan field where we'd done thousand meter repeats until our noses ran faster than us and lactic acid sprang up our legs like fire. We stood on the brink of more than we could imagine that day, the least of which may have been a National Championship.

Spokane, Washington. I say these words and history begins to overlap with the present; I see seated here a team that in four years was able to remake that Championship scene, only this time our day came on the warm fields of Southern Indiana. The last time a group of Calvin runners, alums, friends and family gathered as we do now, it was to recognize a team who had done the impossible: we had broken the string of runner-ups and platform contenders to make history for this institution and for this family I am so fortunate to call myself a member of. We built this legacy on the backs, or more appropriately on the legs, of runners with names like Hoekstra, Klooster, Pfrudender, Peterson, and Harrison. They had taken the torch from Frens and Dragstra and Doherty and Westhouse who had received it from others. The torch passed onto us so that this year, it became a fire fanned by Diemer's summer letters; a furnace stoked by Al's sermons in room 262; and finally a blaze unleashed on courses in towns with names that rattle in our hearts and whisper to our souls words of some elusive greatness: Spokane. Rock Island. Northfield. Hanover.

 But things have changed. As I stretch before a workout, the names I hear are different, the eldest crop of runners are harvested away each year to make way for the next seedlings. The names change, places and times change, even traditions come and go, but what has driven this team to success from its first days has remained. It is our faith, the faith of coaches and families, and that of those who have come before us that has upheld this program.

This team has seen mountains move. This team has witnessed athletes at their peak levels of performance who, when asked to allow a senior a last chance at racing a National meet, have willingly set aside ego, desire, and dreams to allow a teammate to run one last race! This team has seen its members lock hands and pray with arch-rivals in the midst of the National race! This team has seen a group of unknowns, leftovers, and nobodies grow into a team of champions! I believe there is little this team will not achieve in the future, so long as we remain committed to the Lord and to serving one another.

Four autumns have come and gone as they always will-leaves beautiful in their time, and yet not meant to remain-and now a number of us will have to leave this season of our lives. We came with little, we leave with a few trinkets: shirts from races, MIAA Championship participant certificates, banners from National meets, and, oh yeah. a ring or two. These things will eventually find their way to the bottoms of drawers and backs of filing cabinets, only to roll around with dust-bunnies and get left behind when people move. The only things we may take from this team are those things we have freely given to it. I find that nothing has been more valuable to me during my stay here than witnessing and participating in the renewal this team experiences as its members give back to it. It is not only a renewal of this program, the runners in it, new records and accomplishments; it is the renewal of hearts as well, and this is the lasting and significant change this team has made in those speaking tonight and many of you sitting here.

Four years from now I will be gone, my races forgotten save maybe one or two, my name bumped back a few notches on all the charts and lists, and my times will blend in with the smoke of a thousand starter's pistols. There will be runners I will never have had the chance to cool-down with after a hard session of mile repeats, there will be stories of high-school P.R.'s I won't trade, fantastic races I'll miss, and joys I will not share in as the Lord leads my life in a new direction. I will pull out old photos and sit in a dim room and maybe even shed a tear. Yes, I will cry and miss every instant of my time here.

Then some day, years from now, I will get up and go for a run. I will check my watch, whose band will, as always, be broken. There will be no knots in my calves, for I won't have trained like the animals that we are. The pace will slow, and I will wish I could run 15 at 6:30 while debating the edibility of various dining-hall delights, quoting Dumb and Dumber, or singing ridiculous made-up songs about the people I train with. And after I return, take off my shoes, stretch and get some water, I think I'll call Koster, or Edwards, Carrick or Reaso, Paff or Wheels or Engz or Yazzie, Finni or Renyolds, Hendrik, Haags, Hammer or Holmlund, Ivy, Abe, Rollet or Schuster, Klooster or even Hoekstra (if he promises not to throw me into a snowbank), Sicilia or Verbeek, Armstrong, Peterson or Pfruender, Colorado Harrison or Canadian Harrison. I'll miss names here, and there are so many more, but I'll call one. or three. or all of you and see if you can go for a run the next day, or the next weekend, or over Christmas break; even if I know you can't; even if I know I can't. And maybe we'll run together and talk, or maybe we'll not need to say a word, because we already know what the other is thinking even after miles and years have kept us apart. And we'll know it because this team does change, and it changes who we are, but when we're gone we're never very far away from one another. The Lord has an incredible way of keeping His children close.

Thank You!