By Robert Morgan | Published Thursday, November 20, 2008
I have been blessed to get the chance to cover state championship teams in football, baseball, softball, cross country and track during my career. I even played on a state championship football team my junior year in high school.
But I have never had the honor of covering a team like the 2008 Decatur High School girls' cross country team. They literally ran away with the Class 3A state championship last weekend in Round Rock.
This is a team that is probably too young to show much emotion. Four of the seven runners are freshmen, and only one member of this team knew what it's like to win a state championship. Cynthia Carrillo won the title her freshman year and was the heartbeat of the team this year.
Decatur did not win a meet until the final non-district race of the year in October. Still, the confidence of these Lady Eagles was growing by the week, and there was never a doubt that this team could be the most talented in Texas.
To think that Bianca Morrison, Zuleima Palomo, Natalie Neighbors and Veronica Torres are among the best runners in the state as freshmen is hard to grasp. At this time last year this foursome was running in the eighth grade district meet.
They never got rattled regardless of the size of the race. Morrison, the comedian of the group, would always come up with some off-the-wall comment from left field that was good for laughs. There will never be a dull moment with her around.
Palomo, Torres and Neighbors wore smiles before and after every race, never giving the impression they were tired or disappointed in their performance.
Sophomore Hanna Galloway was the secret weapon that made this team so good. She never won a race but she was always right there with the best of them and was an integral part of this team's success as she was consistently in the front of the pack.
Junior Rebecca Roose did not run at the start of the year as she had to recover from a high-ankle sprain she got when she fell on some railroad tracks. In the end, however, she was more like the locomotive of this team as she pushed everyone else to be better.
Sydney Lawrence was a member of the 2005 state championship team but was an alternate this year. Park, who had the toughest job of the year in setting the team for district, regionals and state, moved his four-year letterman as an alternate and went with his seven runners that had the fastest times this year.
Lawrence was at every meet and practice along the way and did not back down even though she did not get to run for the state championship. It was a hard move for Park to make, but it proved Lawrence's commitment to the team when she stood right beside her teammates and cheered them on to the state championship.
Carrillo is the only runner this group will lose this year. They will lose one of the best runners in all of Texas, but they will also lose a soft-spoken team leader that knows what it takes to win.
At the state meet, she led her team on a long walk away from all the action and Coach David Park. It looked like the mother duck leading all her little ducklings across the street.
Coach Park had no idea where they were, and even went on a search for them after they were out of sight for a while. He never worried that something was wrong because he knew Carrillo had her reasons for taking the team away from all the excitement so that they could talk and stretch in peace and quiet.
It's small things like that made Carrillo the glue of this masterpiece. She had the job of keeping together a team that was mostly made up of students who were in middle school last year but that proved to be the best in Texas this year.
I've never been around a leader such as Carrillo, and she will be missed for years to come. I likely won't see another athlete like her, but what she has taught this team over the course of six months is something that I'm sure will keep this winning tradition around for years to come.
Thanks for the memories Cynthia, and congratulations to the Lady Eagles.
