by Jen Slingland Some people may have heard of St. Mary's County in passing, but it is not known for its running tradition.
Historically, many people from St. Mary's have been born, bred, and buried there. It has only been within the last 10 years with the U.S. government military base re-alignment that St. Mary's has had a large influx of outsiders who have been relocated to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park, MD. Many originally from St. Mary's do not leave, or if they do leave, it is not for long. Traditionally, the runners that hail from St. Mary's have had difficulty finding recognition in a state that is highly focused on its metropolitan areas and the powerhouse schools in Howard, Montgomery, and Baltimore Counties.
"St. Mary's County is really home grown," said Great Mills High School head cross country coach Arturo Leon. "It's hard here because we do not have kids coming inside the county. You don't hear about a great runner coming into St. Mary's - we have to build them up," Leon said.
That is exactly what Leon is trying to do with junior Anna Sparr. Although Sparr had only one other teammate to run with last season, she still turned heads among the county coaches. Sparr's best race of the season last year was the SMAC Championship race where she ran 20:00 flat.
"[The SMAC Championship] was my personal record and it motivated me to do better this season," Sparr said, and she is hoping to cut into the high- to mid-19:00s by the start of the fall.
Coach Leon himself is a transplant to the county. He graduated from Great Mills High School in 2002 after moving there his junior year and running cross country for the Hornets. He then moved to New York before returning to the county to teach in a local middle school. He has been coaching cross country at Great Mills for three years and runs into his former teachers all of the time.
"We're very much tied together here. There is a strong sense of history," Leon added, explaining that he is currently coaching athletes whose parents ran cross country for the Hornets. Even the principal of Great Mills, Tracy Heibel, ran for the team in the 80s.
Although the three public high schools in St. Mary's have remained somewhat obscure on the running radar, the county should start getting some attention from the rest of the state. Leonardtown High School boys and girls teams have been the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference Champions for four years in a row, and the boys squad has been the 4A East Regional Champions for two years straight as well. The boys and girls team will be defending the title of regional champs this fall after both squads came off undefeated seasons. Fourth year head coach Jamie Copsey is expecting another successful season ahead and hopes to see his teams defend their titles.
Copsey will be looking to seniors Mike Hageman and Matt Oechsel - the #2 and #3 runners in the conference last season. Both seniors have siblings moving up to possibly fill in the lost spots to graduation, and Copsey is hoping to see a strong showing from junior Sean Hageman and Sophomore Brian Oeschel. Copsey is losing the #1 and #2 female runners in his conference with the graduation of Katlyn Dillow, who will be running at Towson this fall, and Olivia Webster. He's counting on sophomores Anna Frowein and Ashley Duvall, as well as juniors Jessica Gass and Natlaie Dillow.
Although he has strong teams returning, Copsey is not banking on his past successes as guarantees to winning the conference and region again.
"What we have done in the past really does not matter at this point. Our region is really tough... and we have been fortunate to win," Copsey said, adding that Severna Park, South River, and Broadneck have presented great competition for him in the last few years.
Copsey himself is part of the history and culture that Leon described of St. Mary's. Graduating from Leonardtown High School in 1998, Copsey ran for the Raiders, played basketball and baseball, and played basketball for Lynchburg College in Virginia before returning to LHS to teach physical education and coach cross country and boys junior varsity basketball. Just 20 minutes down the road at Chopticon High School, retired cross country coach Hilary Copsey, Jamie's father, led the Braves as a physical education teacher and coach for well over 30 years. In his last season in 2007, dad gave son a run for his money in the SMAC Championship, coming in 2nd in SMAC to the LHS Raiders. Currently, Jamie is coaching his sister at LHS, junior Cali Copsey. Close-knit community is definitely an understatement.
Copsey would like to see running get more recognition in the southern counties, saying that it would probably help if the county itself could set up programs to get the kids running earlier.
"It is important to get them started young. There is no middle school running here - maybe that is done in the upper counties," Copsey said.
As a result of the recent LHS running success, Leonardtown Middle School has begun a running club during the school year, and Copsey invites the middle school kids over to the high school - located about 100 yards away - to come over and run for fun and to find out what cross country is all about. He also tries to get the parents to help influence their kids to take the sport more seriously and be more committed, just like his father did for him.
"Dad had me running when I was young. I would bike along side of him sometimes. He was a big influence on me with athletics. I love sports and I don't know what I would do without sports," Copsey said.
The coaches do not expect much to change in St. Mary's in terms of the talent to pull from in the county, but they do expect to receive more recognition and more coverage as they try to make some noise in the state.
"There are a lot of good runners in southern Maryland that are missed and do not get recognized and should be," Leon said. He is pround to see a local home-grown runner succeed at higher levels because of the unique character of St. Mary's County.
"When our athletes do well, we know it is special because we know we got them there - [the county] built them and they're succeeding at the higher levels," Leon said.