The 2009 Missouri High School Cross Country Season is right around the corner and what better way to kick things off than with an article about two of the best cross country runners the State has ever seen! Big River caught up with returning Foot Locker finalists Emily Sisson and Diane Robison shortly after the Nike Outdoor Nationals in North Carolina. The following article will also appear in Missouri Runner and Triathlete Magazine and was written by Big River co-owner Ben Rosario. Make sure to check out the Big River site all year long for articles, rankings, pictures, videos and more!
Parkway Central Duo Looking to Go Out With a Bang!
The Foot Locker Cross Country Championships have long been called the only true national championship in all of high school sports. The race brings together the country's 40 best individuals, boys and girls, to compete on the famed Balboa Park cross country course in San Diego where each year the nation's top harriers are crowned. Missouri has had its share of qualifiers over the years but not near the numbers that states steeped in distance running tradition such as California, Michigan and Illinois have produced.
In fact, in the ten years from 1998 through 2007, Missouri had only two girls qualify for the prestigious meet. Last fall, that trend changed when two girls from Missouri qualified in the same year. Those two girls, Emily Sisson and Diane Robison, happened to be from the same school, they are both going to be seniors in 2009-2010 and through running have become great friends.
Sisson and Robison took two very different paths to last year's championships, however. Sisson, a transfer from the State of Nebraska where she was a multiple-time State Champion, came to Missouri in the fall of 2008 as a two-time Foot Locker finalist already. In fact, she had won the Midwest Regional qualifying race as a freshman and finished third in the finals that same year. She was also a US Junior Champion at 5,000 meters on the track and was widely regarded as one of the top female distance runners in the country.
Robison was certainly seen as a phenomenal talent, but on a more local level. She had burst onto the scene in Missouri with an incredible sophomore cross country season during which she set several course records and finished with a dominating win at the State Championships. She went on to have an incredible track season in the spring of 2008 and looked to be a clear favorite to defend her State cross country title later that fall.
That was before she found out she would be getting a new teammate. Robison said she did not find out that Sisson would be coming to Parkway Central until midway through the summer.
“I found out during summer training with Coach [Ryan] Banta,” Robison said. “He didn't want to tell me at first.”
In this day and age of internet chat rooms and message boards not even high school girls cross country is immune. Word spread that Sisson would be joining Robison at Parkway Central and teams all over the state knew they were going to have their hands full with a pretty dynamic duo.
Robison said it was not easy at first.
“It was kind of scary for me,” Robison said. “I felt a lot of pressure to be as good as her and try to beat her but that changed after the first few races.”
Those first few races lived up to the hype with Sisson and Robison turning in big time performances at several meets including a one-two finish at the extremely competitive Rim Rock Invitational in Lawrence Kansas .
For Sisson her introduction into Missouri cross country was not complete until she tackled the notoriously difficult State Meet course in Jefferson City . Sisson said her teammates had warned her about the hilly layout at the Oak Hills Golf Center.
“I kind of thought how hard could it really be,” Sisson said. “It ended up being one of the toughest courses I have ever run.”
It was so tough in fact that Sisson, who had already broken the Nebraska State Meet record, was unable to do the same in Missouri falling just six seconds short of Merideth Snow's 17:51 clocking back in 2005. Snow was Missouri's last Foot Locker Finalist and had taken the record away from Hazelwood Central star Meghan Thompson, Missouri's highest ever finisher at Foot Locker thanks to her runner-up finish way back in 1989.
When Sisson and Robison headed to Kenosha , Wis. for the Foot Locker Midwest Regional it was the perfect situation for both athletes to shine. Sisson, who had been largely unchallenged during the season, would get a chance to face some top notch competition and prep for the Foot Locker finals. Robison, who had ran in Sisson's rather large shadow for most of the year, would be able to run with no pressure and show that she too was national class.
Things couldn't have worked out better. Sisson led much of the race before getting nipped at the line by Michigan 's Meghan Goethals. Robison fought all the way to the line and garnered that all important tenth spot, the final qualifier for nationals.
“I just kept telling myself I have to get top 10,” Robison said. “I really want this.”
She got it and was rewarded with a trip most high schoolers only get to dream about. The finalists are all flown out to San Diego and treated like kings and queens for a weekend complete with fancy hotel rooms, great food and most importantly great advice. Robison said Ryan Hall and several other Olympians spoke to the athletes about training, stressing the importance of blending speed work in with lots of base mileage.
The race itself did not go as planned for the two Parkway Central Lady Colts as Sisson finished 29 th and Robison was 36 th . If this past track season was any indication however, the girls did not let it get them down.
Sisson tore up the track all spring long highlighted by a phenomenal State Meet during which she won three State titles and broke two State records. One of those was Thompson's 3200 record which had stood for 20 years. Sisson ran 10:24.12 to break the old mark by just more than one full second.
“I was kind of excited and went out too fast,” Sisson said. “I wasn't really focused on the record though. I just wanted to run a fast time.”
The dynamic duo was not done with fast times though as the Nike Outdoor National Meet was only three weeks after State. The meet, held in Greensboro North Carolina , has become the track season's equivalent to Foot Locker and features nearly all of the nation's best track and field athletes.
Sisson showed why she is considered one of those top athletes when she ran away with the 5k, finishing 27 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor in a personal best of 16:34.36. Robison won the third heat of the girl's mile in 4:55.02 which placed her sixth overall. Perhaps the most anxious the girls were all weekend though was on Friday when they ran the 4 x 800 meter relay with their Parkway Central teammates Kathleen Thompson and Lauren Johnson.
“We were all really nervous before the race,” Robison said. “We were all saying that we were even more nervous than we were before State.”
The race, which was broadcast live on the internet, featured all of the country's best relay squads and Central figured to be right in the mix coming off of a 9:06 clocking at the Missouri State Meet. Robison led off in the lead and it looked for a bit like the ladies might be in contention for a National title with Sisson looming on the anchor leg but squads from New Jersey and Colorado proved too much and the Colts eventually finished a very respectable seventh.
After a very long season Sisson and Robison added two more accolades to their impressive campaigns but this time on opposite sides of the country. Sisson grabbed runner-up honors in the 3k at the US Junior Championships in Eugene , Ore. and Robison took fourth at the US Youth Champs in Ypsilanti, MI. Sisson's performance earned her a spot on the US team for the Junior Pan Am Championships at the end of July in Trinidad and Tobago .
Then both girls will have to look ahead to their senior cross country season and of course try to somehow top themselves once again. Robison said she has not thought about it too much yet but that she knows of at least one thing she would like to do.
“I am hoping to break 18 minutes,” Robison said. “18:04 is my best so I would definitely like to beat that.”
Sisson said her biggest goal is to stay healthy and run well but she did mention what she would like to do at Foot Locker.
“I would really like to beat my freshman year time,” Sisson said.
If she does she may just have a shot at becoming the first Missourian to win the coveted title. She also may have a teammate not too far behind.
Photos courtesy of Big River Running Company and Tracy Rollins
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