Why run cross country with Dunedin High’s Clemente Espiollia
DUNEDIN, Fla. — Why would anyone run cross country? The sport is decidedly unglamorous. Basically, you run.
Even the very name ‘cross country’ lends itself to torture. It is a 3.1 mile or five kilometer trek through rain, wind, or sun, on mud, grass, road, or gravel. The objective? Run.
So why do it?
According to Dunedin High School senior Clemente Espiollia, he does it for the grit and grind.
“It’s 3.1 miles of misery,” Espiollia said. “That’s what makes it fun.”
But he readily admits that his first week of running in 2018, his freshman year of high school, he found himself wondering ‘why cross country?’ too.
“I can’t remember the exact time but my first run was somewhere around 33 minutes,” he admits with a wide smile.
Well, about two weeks ago, Clemente broke his school’s long standing record, with a time of 16:29.50. When asked how that felt, his smile split open even wider, “it felt like all the hard work and effort paying off.”
Espiollia is physically unassuming. He looks like an average teenager, tanned and scrawny, somewhat fidgety under attention but easily excited about a sport he clearly loves. This ‘unassuming’ teenager has cut his run time in half in three years by finding a balance between eating well, training hard, and listening to his body. But he has not always been an athlete.
The young record-holder was once a regular middle school kid searching for his niche. His mom, Claire, was active duty military, so they moved around a lot when he was younger. The constant moving helped him get used to adversity. When Claire retired to Clearwater, Clemente started attending a Catholic middle school where he tried basketball, flag football, and other activities, none of which he was very good at.
Clemente Espiollia wanted more than that. He wanted a chance to be GOOD at something. He wanted to compete to be the best. So, when his mom made him go out for cross country in high school he agreed.
She told him not to quit, “when he started seeing improvement, he was addicted. I told him to just keep running.”
Three years later, Espiollia holds the Dunedin High record in cross country and continues to train as if he has accomplished nothing. Of course, he credits Claire for his success.
“My mom gets me all my running shoes and my running gear, [and] she gets all the food that I make,” he said. “She’s pretty important.”
But it is clearly Espiollia that takes the lead on his intensive training schedule. Starting on Monday and ending on Sunday, this kid is running every single day. From strength, to speed and agility, to rest and recovery, every day is a run day. The only thing left to question is how much he will run or how hard he will train.
A week before a big meet he changes his schedule to prioritize rest but he makes one thing abundantly clear, “even though I have the [Dunedin High] record, I want to go faster.”
So how does a teenager manage the pressure of a pro-style training schedule and his senior year in high school? By taking it one day at a time.
“You don’t have to be tall or able to throw a football really far,” Espiollia said. “[Cross country] is an even playing field for everybody. As long as you’re willing to put in the work, you can be as good as you want to be.”
One thing is for sure, Clemente is not afraid of hard work.
When he is not training, he is doing homework. He is an early college student at St. Petersburg College, by way of a dual enrollment program offered by Pinellas County. His favorite classes are in the humanities, including art and history. He dreams of being an ambassador one day but his mom is advocating for ROTC, either way he plans to major in political science.
For his part, Espiollia is ready to trade the flat, hot greenery of Florida for the chilly pavement of Princeton, New Jersey as a walk-on. He holds no false dreams of scholarship-running at this point, he is just focused on staying in the sport while getting a superb education. And he has the brains and work ethic to back that dream up. We hope the Tigers are listening.
“With this record, I [hope] I proved the main point: Anyone can do anything as long as they’re
willing to put the effort behind it,” Espiollia said.
Clemente may not be the fastest cross country runner in the state or the county, but his attitude and outlook are addictive. When asked how he cut his time in half, the young man insisted it was as simple as running, working hard, believing, and focusing on one day at a time:
“The hardest part is getting out the door,” he said. “Once you get out the door, everything is fine.”
So, 3.1 miles or five kilometers, through all of the elements, over any terrain thrown at him, in whatever shoes accommodate his flat feet, here he comes. Princeton, watch out for him. Go Clemente go.
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