Staff photo / John Vargo

Chaney runners Angelo Pilson, front, and Samuel Aiken, behind, talk with coach Everett Briggs after they finished the Spartan Invitational last month in Boardman.

BOARDMAN — Groups of 10 or 20 runners come to the starting line.

They’re all wearing the same blue, green or red colors on their uniform, depending on their school.

There are teams like Maplewood and McDonald with storied histories and deep rosters in the sport of cross country.

Plenty of miles in the offseason, upwards of 100 miles per week for the elite runners — wandering through a town’s streets or on country roads bordered by fields. Self-motivation is the cornerstone of these teams.

The Warren G. Harding and Chaney High School cross country athletes are aware that teams like Maplewood, McDonald and other accomplished programs know what it takes to get runners to the state level.

Both Harding and Chaney have to be creative with their workouts with limited numbers and obstacles.

Either they’re taking the workouts to the streets of Warren, roaming their respective tracks or taking a carpool to Mill Creek Park, it’s what these teams need to do to be successful.

They each have their own ideas how to grow their programs.

Chaney runner Samuel Aiken said the sport is fun, but its like life — a roller coaster. He said runners like him have to persevere during runs and practices.

“As my coaches say, it teaches you how to be a man,” Aiken said. “It’s like life. There’s ups and downs, but you have to go through it. Running cross country will help you in your life. You have to keep pushing on even through physical fatigue, mental fatigue, emotional fatigue. You have to keep going through it.”

Teammate Angelo Pilson said there’s pressure with such few numbers. Chaney has three runners — one from Chaney, another from the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center and the other is home schooled.

Pilson said his objective each and every race is to represent the Cowboys.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” he said. “Most people know it’s hard work. I try to motivate people to tell them to try to run more distance instead of the easy way, which would be track.”

Chaney coach Everett Briggs said the key to grow the Cowboys’ program is to take to the track. Briggs, a distance runner, had to change the way of his thinking.

His daughter ran for Austintown Middle School and he took her to a track event. Youngstown City Schools came to the event and the team consisted of all sprinters, no middle or long distance runners.

He knew taking over the program would be difficult, coming in as an assistant coach from the Fitch program.

Jamil Johnson was the first breakthrough on the track side, heading to the 2019 regional in Division II.

“He was a sprinter-type that could run,” Briggs said.

The momentum continued that fall in cross country as Jonathan Simmons and Johaun Whipple barely missed going to the Division II regional meet.

This Chaney team saw athletes run 3 minutes faster than the year before.

“Our training is a lot different,” Briggs said. “Some of these kids are athletically gifted. They just haven’t been exposed to running. I thought we were on the right track. We had a good, core group.

“It’s made me re-evaluate my entire training. I’m a pure distance guy. I’ve been running in the park, ran marathons.”

Simmons didn’t come back this season to concentrate on an after-school job.

“I would love to have a pool of 20, but that’s not the case,” Briggs said. “Everyone is team-sports oriented. It’s basketball, football at Chaney. I knew cross country was going to be something of an afterthought. It was more of a challenge to me.

“Let’s see what I can do. I had quite a few kids leave. What can I do to promote the sport with this whole COVID-19 thing? It’s made it more difficult.

Without structured practice, a lot of these kids are not running.

“I talked to coaches at Fitch and during the coronavirus they’re jumping in groups of three, four or five kids and going out to the park. We don’t have that luxury. That’s a little bit of the frustration. We do what we can.”

Briggs has conferred with different coaches around the country, seeing how speed and other forms of training help his distance runners succeed.

These athletes played football, basketball, but didn’t know how their mechanics transferred to distance running. Briggs spends time on the basics of the individualized sport.

“I train everyone like they’re an 800-meter runner, basically,” Briggs said. “If you’re going to run Chaney cross country, I’m not going to send you out on endless miles. Go on an 8-mile jog through the park, we’re not doing that. We can work the same system by switching it up. We do a lot of track stuff.

“It keeps the kids engaged. I can coach them and run with them, too. I ran a 3-hour marathon a couple of years ago.”

Harding has three boys and three girls in its program.

Coach Charles Penny said the COVID-19 pandemic hurt his team and numbers this season. Nate James was supposed to run as a freshman for the Raiders but broke his foot early in the season. James was the Trumbull County junior high champion last season, the first in school history.

Harding is fighting a stereotype that team sports are where athletes gravitate toward. Running in an individualized sport like cross country, not so much.

“To them, finishing in a cross country race, or hearing the gun go and battling in that race, it’s just as important to them as it is the goalie of a soccer team stopping a goal or a football player making the game-winning tackle or scoring the winning touchdown,” Penny said. “They get the limelight because the city has always glorified those sports. To the kids and coaches that coach these sports, cross country, it’s just as important to us, our sport is, as anyone coaching any other sport.

“I think that’s the part people fail to understand. The biggest misconception is all they have to do is go out and run, big deal. Well, come out and run 6 miles and see how you feel. I don’t care how much you bench press or how much you squat, let’s go out and run a 5K and see how you do. There’s a muscle called a brain. Running those races are more of a mental challenge than people give credit to, than these people who run these cross country meets.”

Penny sells the Harding program as something for the athletes to be part of, telling them it’s a family-oriented sport.

“In all the other fall sports, you have to be specialized in certain area to be successful in those fall sports,” he said. “In cross country, everyone is running 2 miles. Everyone is running a 5K. Everybody is doing the same thing. Everybody knows the pain they’re going through.

“It makes it very easy for another parent to see a young man or woman struggle and cheer for them. They know their son or daughter is doing the exact, same thing.”

Harding’s program, which has cultivated middle school runners, has high hopes for its future.

“The fact that we’re getting better each year, with the help of our middle school program and our administration buying in what our ultimate goal is, hopefully win a state title in cross country,” Penny said. “As crazy as that sounds now in 2020 and all that’s going on, I made the same statement in 2004 about track. Then people thought I was crazy. When you have a good goal and a goal that can be achieved with great kids, I think we can achieve that.”