Eastern's Eagle-Red members turn running passion into Bloomsday Corporate Cup dynasty
By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
When you think of sports dynasties you typically don't think of Eastern Washington University.
No, other more well known names come to mind. The 1960s Boston Celtics with eight straight NBA titles, the UCLA Bruins run of seven straight men's basketball titles from 1967-1973, Notre Dame football in the 1920s under Knute Rockne, Oklahoma football in the 1950s under Bud Wilkinson, and of course, the New York Yankees with 27 total World Series titles.
Maybe they're not in the same historical category, but Eastern has a team that has carved out its own dynastical niche. They haven't done it on the green grass of the baseball diamond, the football gridiron or the basketball hardwood.
They've done it on the asphalt covered, often cracked, uneven streets of Spokane the first weekend in May since 1983. They're the Eagle-Red men's Bloomsday Corporate Cup team – winners of 19 of the 29 overall team Cups at the annual 12-kilometer competition that often draws 50,000-plus runners, joggers and walkers nationally and internationally and from all walks of life.
In fact, Eastern has been so dominant that they have won 14 straight Cups from 1997 to 2010. They've scored a perfect 3,000 points three times, beating Spokane Public Schools in 2004, Rockwood Clinic in 2008 and Battelle Northwest in 2009.
All this from a group of runners who don't do a lot of training together, don't generally enter other competitive races and didn't begin pounding the pavement seriously until later in life.
Eastern's Corporate Cup experience began virtually at the end of the first Cup in 1982. English professor and humanities coordinator Dr. Grant Smith said he and four other fellow Eastern faculty and staff members, Jim Hanegan, Jeff Corkill, Bill Horne and Scott Mabee were standing around after the race and heard about the Cup. They watched the awards ceremony, with Washington Water Power (now Avista) winning the overall team title, and came to the same conclusion.
“We'd have won that thing if we were a team,” Smith said.
Smith volunteered to organize a team for the 1983 Cup, essentially handling the paperwork. Since then Smith's role has grown, with Eastern fielding seven teams in 2010, six in the 600-1,299 employee division along with a women's squad.
According to the Bloomsday website, Corporate Cup competition takes place among 11 divisions, ranging from businesses with three to 24 employees to those with over 1,300 along with overall team and best women's divisions. Runners compete for best time in their respective age groups just like everyone else.
Points are scored for the corporate team by dividing each runner's individual time into the winning time for his or her age bracket. For example if the runner's age bracket had a winning time of 50 minutes, and the runner's time was 60 minutes, the runner's corporate score would be 833 points (50 divided by 60 = .83333 or 833 points). The top three scores are combined to produce the team score.
Eastern won the overall team category their first time out in 1983, beginning a string of three wins in a row, broken in 1984 by Sunset Sports. Washington State University reached the podium in 1985, and in 1986 the city of Spokane began a run of three straight, helped along by what Smith referred to as “a couple of ringers.”
WSU returned to the podium in 1991 and 1992, and Smith said he and his comrades were beginning to get a bit discouraged.
“We wondered if we were ever going to get back into it,” he said.
Eastern did, winning in 1993 and 1994 and after WSU won again in 1995 and 1996, won the first of its current 14 straight by setting the course record in 1997 with the current squad in a combined time of 2 hours, 3 minutes and 14 seconds.
“We were already getting a little long in the tooth, but had three guys who were close to being under 40 minutes,” Smith said of the record. “That was a real neat thing to have.”
The current squad consists of Smith, Corkill, Carl Combs, Scott Melville and Jeffrey Rahn. Corkill had some leg problems this year, and Smith said he graciously stepped aside for this year's Cup, with Dave Millet running in his place.
Smith said he had some reservations about defending the Cup. Not only was Corkill out, but also Rahn was “hobbled” and Melville said he had a bit of the flu the week of Bloomsday.
It didn't seem to matter too much as Eagle-Red won with 2,925 points, easily out scoring Runner's Soul. Individually both Smith and Melville placed second in their respective age brackets, with Combs fourth, Millet sixth and Rahn 12th. Smith scored the highest, 983 points, while Combs had the fastest time at 41:14.
“It's OK,” Combs said. “My PR (personal record) is a 40:53 and I'm shooting for it every year, but I think it's getting further and further away.”
Eastern's women also captured their division, edging Gonzaga University 2,557-2,554 for their third consecutive Cup and fourth since 2004, finishing second in 2006 and 2007 to WSU. Leading the Eagles in points was Karen McKinney, 877, fifth in her age bracket with a time of 1:11.15. Kelly Coogan had the fastest time for the Eastern women, 50:37 and sixth in her bracket, with Laurie Morley, Toni Taylor and Diana Thew rounding out the team.
Smith said that for him, competing in Bloomsday isn't just about winning the Cup, although that's a big plumb. It's about celebrating good health and intensions.
“Bloomsday is a very individualistic kind of thing, but also very inclusive,” he said.
Neither Smith nor Combs said they ran distance races competitively until well after high school and college. Smith started running literally on his 36th birthday, and now averages five miles a day. It's a natural part of life for him.
“If you have to go to the bathroom you go to the bathroom. I tell my wife I have to go running, so I go running,” he said. “I do it for the exact same reason I floss my teeth – it's a discipline. I race, because I can.”
Combs' experience isn't much different. Cross country was not offered at his high school alma mater of Almira-Hartline, one of the many small combined schools in Eastern Washington. He thought about walking on at Eastern when he came to school in 1983, but decided against it. It was only after being out of college for several years that he finally took to the pavement with some success.
“I found out later in life that I could compete with those folks,” he said.
Both Smith and Combs said they and the other runners have their own ways of training, and seldom head out together. While Smith limits his workouts to daily runs, ramping up in the month before Bloomsday, Combs sometimes competes in other races, such as last year's Pacific Northwest Regional Open and Masters Cross Country Championships at Plantes Ferry State Park in Spokane, placing third in his age bracket. He also does some cross training too.
As for Cup competition at Bloomsday both men said it's more about going out and running your own race against runners from your age bracket than it is about tracking down other teams.
“Honestly, in Bloomsday, I can't find anybody in particular,” Combs said. “With local runners, I may get a bit competitive, try to stay close.”
And Smith's strategy?
“None whatsoever,” he said with a laugh.
Smith said he really just tries to do his best, pushing himself rather than pushing or being pushed by others, which he said can lead to injury. The university has a good pool of runners, something Smith thinks is just a “statistical flaw” that helps him assemble the number of teams they do, and achieve success.
Eastern has enjoyed rivalries through the years in the Corporate Cup, namely with WSU. At one point the Cougars were fielding some talented teams and Smith said they enjoyed the “jocularity.” Winning and losing seemed more important to the Palouse folks though, and eventually the rivalry tailed off.
“We're kind of happy-go-lucky,” Smith said. “After awhile the president down there didn't want to have to be funding their runners to come up here and get beat. You know, we're good.”
Sounds a little like dynasty talk.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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