Don’t be oblivious to the special teams

I try to be observant while I am covering an event.

I try to pick up on little things like a kid pacing before his turn to compete or how an athlete reacts to success or failure.

During interviews, I try to listen with a critical ear to develop more questions based on the information I’ve been told to understand the topic on a deeper level. Yet still sometimes I miss the forest for the trees.

I have covered the Fort Recovery High School cross country team a handful of times, but it only took my girlfriend Emily a couple of hours at the regional meet for her to recognize just how close the team was. As I took a step back, the success of the program started to make sense to me.

Thinking back to when I was playing competitively, the most successful team I was on had amazing chemistry. In my junior year of high school, the basketball team set the school’s best record as we finished 21-3.

We had three goals for the season:

Become a family.

Earn a conference title.

Advance in the playoffs.

There was a reason that becoming a family was the first goal. It was because we couldn’t accomplish the other two without it.

Saying you want to become a family is easy, actually doing it is another thing. Every coach can preach on the importance of culture, but those who actually follow through are often the ones who find success.

Again, I missed the obvious reasons that made that team special. It wasn’t until mid-way through college that I realized there was something special beyond the success on the court.

The end of the season was always an emotional time, but that year was different. Sometimes it’s falling short in a playoff tournament. Other times it’s because I’d have to wait another six months to play again. But the final game of my junior season there was emotion because I would never get to play with that group again.

That family was important to me. It seems as if that is the same kind of magic the Indians have found.

“During cross season, we literally become family,” senior Natalie Brunswick said. “They're literally your sisters. You tell them everything so it's gonna be really sad when it's over, that's for sure.”

Brunswick’s words ring true. That team has become a family. 

The Indians have three seniors, two of whom have been there all four years, two juniors, a sophomore and a freshman. Combined, the group boasts 11 years of state experience. While talent is extremely important to a team’s success, you don’t waltz into that much success by accident.

Coach Christy Diller pointed to the work of former coach Kylie Moody while this group of athletes were in middle school. Diller said there was something about Moody that brought the group together and excited them about cross country. From there, the girls have formed a bond and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

“I think it’s something very special,” Diller said. “There's not anything that we have to do for that, because I think those kids, they're the secret sauce.”

Going back to my junior year, there was something else that was unique about that team. Multiple times throughout the season, especially during winter break, we had former players come back.

The three that come to mind are Harrison Cleary, Mitch Magyar and Josh Duchniak. Harrison at the time was a top player in program history and made a few appearances to give my class some perspective on just how hard we had to work to be successful.

Mitch made a handful of appearances, likely because his brother Max was still on the team.

Josh came to really help us out. I was on junior varsity while he was in high school, so I never had the opportunity to play with him. So, the times he pulled me — a bench player who was lucky to see more than five minutes a game — to the side to coach me up and help me out, it really resonated.

That level of commitment to the program after you already served your time speaks volumes to the culture. Maybe it is different in smaller towns like Fort Recovery where everyone is more interconnected, but back in Oak Creek, it took effort to stay involved in those ways.

It sounds like the Indians aren’t short on alumni appearances. Jenna Hart and Ellie Will, the two seniors who will compete for a fourth time at state Saturday, mentioned they’ve received messages from former teammates to congratulate them on making it back to state and that a few have even made it to meets.

They’ve heard from 2021 graduates Anna Wendel and Hana Metzger, ’22 graduate Alyssa Heinrichs and ’23 graduates Megan Diller and Alexis Wendel.

“I’ve had seniors from when we were freshman reach out and say congrats and that just goes to show how close we really were because it's just like a family,” Hart said. “They’ve all been really supportive and it’s really cool to see.”

What Hart and Will received from their former teammates, they dished right back out as they spoke about how excited they were to see Makenna Huelskamp, Maddie Heitkamp and Nicole Braun react to making it to state for the first time.

While I may at times be oblivious, hopefully the girls can understand beyond the accolades, just how special this team and this program really is.