Part Two: Mondays at the Park
Part Two: Mondays at the Park
It seems that most cross country teams have sacred ground. A trail, a road, a park, some location that is significant to the program and its history. The most famous is Magnolia Road, the punishingly-steep long run route for the University of Colorado, immortalized in Running with the Buffaloes. Oregon, of course, has Pre’s Trail. But even less storied high school and college teams have their own hallowed routes. These are places where the legends of the program have come for decades. These are places where runners go to get better.
The sacred ground for the North Central College men’s cross country team is an ordinary strip of grass known as Lincoln Park. In a place with as much green space as Naperville, Illinois, it would be easy to miss that this span of grass is even a dedicated park. Half a mile long and less than a football field wide, Lincoln Park is hemmed in by a road with ranch-style houses on one side and the DuPage River on the other. There is no playground equipment, barely any trees, and exactly one bench. Local residents rarely use it, to the point that the Park District has erected a decoy dog made of plywood to (unsuccessfully) scare off an invasion of geese. Every college cross country team in the nation is likely within ten miles of a similar patch of grass, be it a park, a corner of campus, or just the shoulder on the side of the highway.
Yet despite Lincoln Park’s humble appearance, the longtime North Central head coach Al Carius decided to make it a cornerstone of his program. From the fall of 1968 to his retirement in 2020, Al brought the team to this grassy patch almost every single autumn Monday. As North Central runners pounded thousands of miles into the ground, and piled up over a dozen national titles, the spiritual bond with Lincoln Park only grew. Now, at the end of every season, the coaches honor those seniors who have spilled literal blood, sweat, and tears into the greenbelt by gifting them glass jars filled with earth from the park. “It’s not dirt,” Al was always careful to clarify about the contents of the jars. “Dirt is something people don’t want. This is soil. It’s priceless.”
As with any journey to a sacred site, just getting to Lincoln Park is a challenge. The 2024 team begins their pilgrimage on a Monday afternoon early in the season. It is the first workout of the year at the park, and after a brief warm-up and drills, the massive blob of fifty runners is itching to get started. None more so than Emerald Svienty, the fifth-year senior and team captain who finished third in the nation at last year’s cross country nationals. With a bushy mustache, mane of curly hair, piercings in both ears, and a thigh tattoo of a flamingo, Emerald look like if Steve Prefontaine spent more time in Portland, Oregon instead of Eugene. Yet despite their casual appearance, Emerald snaps the entire mass of runners to attention simply by yelling out “All set?”
Fifty-one voices chant in reply, “You bet.” And the workout begins.
It starts with a tempo. The mob of runners spins their legs through the bustling residential streets of Naperville, following a five mile route that will deposit them at Lincoln Park. At some points in the season, this opening tempo is just a casual affair. But other times, they blast it. “Different days we’ll emphasize different things,” volunteer assistant coach Zach Hird explains after this early August workout. “The tempo today wasn’t that hard. The top group only ran about 25:50. Some days it’s going to be 23:50.” Indeed, a few weeks later, that same group clocked 23:00 flat for their five miles.
But no matter how fast the team runs their five-mile tempo, the real workout only begins when they reach Lincoln Park. “A lot of history here,” current Head Coach Matt Sinnott says with a smile as the freshmen step onto the soil for the first time. He nods toward the only sign that designates this space as anything other than a patch of grass. Affixed to a light pole is a street sign. Though commissioned by the city, it is not the traditional traffic green or fluorescent yellow. It is Cardinal red with white lettering. “Lincoln Park,” it reads. “Home of North Central Cross Country.” Below, it lists every one of the program’s nineteen national championships.
It is unclear what first drew Al to this spot fifty years ago, but it is clear why he kept coming back. The ground is choppy, the grass is long, and the turns are sharp. It is perfect for cross country. Decades of runners have worn a half-mile loop into the grass along the perimeter of the park. This loop starts at the base of a giant ash tree, and the athletes huddle underneath its shade. They split into five groups based on the times they plan to run their miles in, and with another “All set?” “You bet!” the groups take off one at a time.
These five waves of runners race down the western edge of the park, hugging the road. The first three hundred meters of the loop are also the easiest—flat, open, and with a slight downhill.
Once the groups hit the other end of the park, there’s a hairpin turn, and everyone veers right to follow the edge of the river back to the start. The line of fifty runners tap-dances across four giant ditches and culverts on the low-lying side of the park. “I swear one of those wasn’t there last year,” Emerald says later, bewildered. “Lincoln Park is on its own tectonic plate.”
The loop’s final hundred meters smooth out again as the runners glide along the water. Then they hug the ash tree, make a complete 180-degree turn, and swing back around for a second loop. Two laps is not quite a full mile, but it is close enough. The runners take ninety seconds to regroup, grab some water, think about their life choices, and line up again.
A full Lincoln Park is four mile repeats. Their goal is to run each mile as fast as possible and run each rep faster than the one before.
“This is the hardest workout I’ve ever done,” says sophomore Nolan Crooks. “And we do it every week.”
Indeed, every week. Sometimes the details change. As the season goes on, the length of the recovery portion gradually gets longer. In October, they cut down to 800 repeats instead of miles. After particularly tough races, the entire team will only do a three-mile tempo. But for the most part, every Monday during cross country season, you can find the North Central men’s team gutting out mile repeats at Lincoln Park.
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Emerald plants an aggressive flag in the ground by running the first mile in 4:40. After ninety seconds of rest, they again lead on the second. But as they pace a 4:36 mile from the front, they are joined by teammate BJ Sorg.
Though he is only a sophomore, BJ is one of the fastest runners in the nation. He was the first freshman to cross the finish line at the 2023 national meet, and today he runs stride for stride with Emerald, who finished third in that same race. All-American honors at the end of the season are a real possibility. But still, it’s only August, and the winter grays of cross country nationals feel impossibly distant under the oppressive late-summer heat. BJ finishes the second mile dripping with sweat. He runs his hands through his blond buzzcut and throws off his ski goggle-like sunglasses.
BJ is intense, almost imperious. He thrives at Lincoln Park, he thrives at North Central, and he intends to drag the program out of its post-COVID slump through sheer force of will. “People are fed up with the mediocrity,” he insisted after nationals in 2023, when North Central finished eleven points away from claiming their first title in five years. “Maybe mediocrity is not the right word, because third place shouldn’t be seen as mediocre. But for us, I think it should be.”
Yet despite that fervor, he is still only nineteen years old. When not in running shorts, BJ wears yellow Crocs and oversized anime t-shirts he crops himself. He watches Dancing with the Stars and plays Guitar Hero with his teammates on overnight trips. His passion comes from a deep, deep love for running that blossomed in high school. “I started to fall in love with the grind. Training every day and doing everything to get better.”
North Central proved a natural fit. He dove headfirst into what he calls the “aura” of the program: its history, its traditions, its culture. Nowhere does he better embody that zeal than during mile repeats on Monday. “Bring fire,” BJ tells his teammates before the next rep. “Bring fire to Lincoln Park. Because we need it.”
BJ indeed brings fire on the third rep. Outpacing even Emerald, he blasts the mile in 4:34. Sunglasses back on, eyes forward down the length of Lincoln Park, he and his teammates ready for the next one.
BJ (front, center) and Emerald (front, right) at Lincoln Park in October of 2024. Photo by Dominick Gramarosso.
The temperature climbs to eighty degrees as the runners start the final mile. Droplets of sweat fly off their arms as they swing into the start. Each runner has clocked three miles almost as hard as they possibly can, and now they dig deep to do it one more time. Many of the freshmen, still learning the rhythms and realities of Lincoln Park, have gone out too hard and blown up. A few have already dropped out completely after two or three reps.
Those who remain blitz down the grassy straightaway, hit the jagged right turn, clear the culverts, and drive towards home along the river. They thunder toward the ash tree to start their second lap.
Close to twenty people huddle under the branches, clapping and hollering. Over the noise, assistant coach Tim Hird gives them something to imagine. “It’s Nationals!” he yells. “Let’s go!” It’s September and already he tasks his athletes with mentally preparing for the end of the season.
The cue from Tim to picture the national championship lights a fire in the top seven. BJ charges down the final straightaway one last time and clocks a 4:32 mile. It is his fastest on a day where he averaged 4:35 for all four. Behind him, the other members of North Central’s top five barrel through the finish line, each of them averaging 4:43 or faster on the day.
The rest of the team stampedes through after them. When the dust settles, Head Coach Matt Sinnott checks his stopwatch. Even after a tempo and three gut-busting miles, seventeen runners broke five minutes on their final rep. Seventeen more averaged under 5:17 per mile.
“I’m pretty damn impressed!” Sinnott cheers as the exhausted runners form a massive huddle underneath the ash tree and red street sign. The 2024 team looks up at the championships listed on that sign, knowing that they were won by stacking up workouts almost identical to this one. Today’s results were incredible, but also, in the fifty-year history of the team, completely ordinary. For today was just another Monday at Lincoln Park.
Cam Mallett is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as captain of his D3 cross country team at Berry College in Rome, Georgia before receiving his PhD from Penn State. He talks about running and sports history on his TikTok page, Footnotes With Cam.
Photos: Dominick Gramarosso is a Graduate Assistant for Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. A long time member of the program, his love for the program is embedded to his work as a photographer, a writer, and a coach. You can find his work on Instagram at domg.photos.