PORT TOWNSEND — So there’s this joke.
Ryan Clarke used to tell it a lot when he was in middle school.
It goes something like this: “It was a dark, dark room in a dark, dark house on a dark, dark street in a dark, dark city in a dark, dark county . . .”
“Don’t put my bad joke in the paper,” Clark said.
“I was a middle-schooler.”
Anyway, the joke continues to go something like that.
“It just keeps getting bigger,” Alice Fraser, Clarke’s middle school track and field coach then and high school cross country coach now, said.
“It’s not even a joke. It’s just a way to annoy people.
“He did it all the way to Forks once.”
Since then, Clarke has transformed his long-distance annoyance skills into long-distance running excellence.
“He’s matured,” Fraser said of Clarke’s sense of humor.
The senior ran the race of his life to conclude his high school cross country career last fall with a state championship.
He also won a district championship at the Westside Classic, his second consecutive Olympic League title and has been picked by area coaches and the Peninsula Daily News sports staff as the All-Peninsula Boys Cross Country MVP for the second year in a row.
At the Class 1A state race in Pasco, Clarke shattered his personal record by more than 23 seconds, running the 5,000-meter course in 15 minutes, 37.40 seconds.
“Coming into state, I was hoping for maybe a top-eight finish because he had some pretty stiff competition,” Fraser said.
“I certainly did not expect him to win.”
Among that “stiff competition” were defending state champion Graham Peet of Northwest and three of the four runners who finished ahead of Clarke at the 2013 state meet.
Clarke, obviously, wanted to win state. He also was determined to not finish below his fifth-place showing in 2013.
“I wanted to be at least as good,” Clarke said.
“I was thinking about that when I was sixth.”
With a mile left in the race, he had fallen into sixth place behind Peet and the pack of leaders by, Clarke estimates, seven or eight strides.
He was spent. He was in pain. But he wasn’t done.
“I was hurting at that point, and at three-fourths of mile, I was going down the hill, and that’s when I made my move and caught up to them,” Clarke said, “and passed them.”
And then some.
Clarke ended up finishing 4 seconds ahead of Peet, 5 seconds ahead of third-place Andrew Ayers of King’s, 19 seconds ahead of fourth-place Domenic Rehm of Medical Lake, and ahead of Northwest’s Tamire and Tibebu Proctor, the fifth- and sixth-place finishers, by 20 and 24 seconds, respectively.
“He was just going to hang in there with the top guys and run them out of gas at the end,” Fraser said.
“I don’t know if he knew he had it in him.
“He just decided to put it all out there because there was nothing to lose.”
After his successful junior season — and after placing fourth at the track and field state championships in the 3,200-meter run last spring — Clarke kept running.
“I had run over 500 miles in the summer,” he said.
“Coming into the season, I was planning to use that and turn it into everything I could.
“I was ready to win more.”
Clarke’s work ethic is what most impresses Fraser.
“Day in, day out, he’s consistent,” Fraser said.
“Sometimes you wake up and don’t want to do that morning jog and then do an afternoon run.
“He’s pretty diligent, and it pays off.”
The pay-off is part of what motivates Clarke.
“I love racing and I love competing and I like running — there’s that chemical stuff that makes you feel good,” he said.
“You have to think about how this run will help with that state top-five.”
Plus, it beats sitting around.
“He’s busy,” Fraser said. “He does a lot of stuff, and he seems to be pretty successful at it all.
“He doesn’t rest on his laurels.”
Along with cross country and track and field, Clarke was part of Port Townsend’s Knowledge Bowl and mock trial teams.
He also plays trombone, and even once performed with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra.
Starting this fall, Clarke will attend the University of Portland, where he will run with the cross country team that placed third at NCAA championship meet in 2014.
“That’s going to be really fun running with them,” Clarke said.
Clarke’s sense of humor might have matured, but he still jokes around. One target is Fraser for injuring herself celebrating his state championship.
When she saw Clarke cross the finish line first, she jumped on a chain-linked fence and cracked a rib.
“That’s when you know your coach is extremely involved and cares about you,” Clarke said.
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
