Post BrHS XC thoughts

On Friday, Broomfield HS hosted it XC invitational.   It had been a great day all day – one of those days I love about XC:  kids, competition, blue bird skies, cheering team mates …  but it ended tragically when when one of the competitors, Brandon Reis, from Peak to Peak High School passed away shortly after the competition. 

There are no words that can effectively capture how awful this sort of thing is.  A family has lost a son and a brother, a team has lost a team mate, a fellow student and their team captain, and our community lost a young man that was clearly going to be a positive and loving contributor to this world.   It really feels terribly unfair … and I know that is just a gross understatement. 

I have been asked, “what happened?”  I really don’t know.  But I understand how people want need an explanation for this so we can more easily come to terms with it.  It does not add up for us easily when a kid who has been running throughout high school and was a competitive varsity athlete has this happen to him.

Being this close to this and being a parent also has driven me to consider what if this was one of my children.  I can’t even fathom how difficult that would be for me or my family.  But I think it also naturally drives you as a parent to ask if you are willing to have your kid do events like this.

As a lifetime runner, competitor and fan of the sport, I am aware that there have been deaths in competition or shortly afterwards.   There are statistics on this sort of thing that indicate it is rare, but those appear to be focused on marathon distance events rather than XC 5ks.  I’d expect that those sort of events are likely to draw older participants than 17 year old kids.  There are much easier to find statistics on teen fatalities related to driving, especially distracted driving. 

One of the more publically known cases of a running fatality where a fit young runner passed away in competition was the death of Olympics Trials qualifier, NCAA 10k champion and Notre Dame grad Ryan Shay in 2008 at the 2008 OT Marathon Trials in New York.  He died at the fifth mile of the race. 

I recognize at some point, statistics don’t matter in matters like this  The passing of a loved one like this is not something that you can put a number value on.  My views on this, which are ones that TZ and I reviewed over the weekend, are that we can’t live in a world where you avoid all risk.   Of course we don’t want this sort of thing to happen, and we can probably conclude that to some degree because we don’t think it would happen.  But it could. 

And to a lesser degree, we encourage risk beyond running.  Learn to ride a bike, you might skin your knee.  Take the hard class, you might fail.  Travel the world, you might get lost.   Fall in love, your heart might get broken.   Have children, and like my and many parents, you may end up burying them before you pass away. 

But the reward along the way is likely to be greater.  Even if it is that you tried, shared time with someone, and invested in a process to be something greater than yourself. 

My thoughts and prayers go to this young man’s family, team, friends and school mates.  His passing is truly a sad affair.  I don’t want to imagine your grief.  But I do take a sliver of learning from this moment that we toe a line every day to be something greater than what we were, and with that could come a price.