SEQUIM — Neither rain nor slips nor mud, nor slips from the mud to the gravel was going to stop Brendon Despain his senior season.
“This year, I didn’t make any excuses,” Despain said. “I didn’t want anything to get in the way.”
And not much did. Despain placed ninth at state, won the Olympic League title and helped Sequim win its third consecutive district cross country championship and finish third at the Class 2A state meet.
He also was the only area runner to finish a 5-kilometer race in less than 16 minutes, and he has been chosen as the All-Peninsula Boys Cross Country MVP by area coaches and the Peninsula Daily News sports staff.
Even when something got in Despain’s way, he was not stopped.
The Westside Classic district meet at American Lake Veterans Golf Course in Tacoma was a muddy mess.
Coming off a league championship and a personal record time of 15:52.97 the week before, Despain was running with a tight pack when, about a mile into the race, he slipped on the mud and slid onto a patch of gravel.
“I just biffed it way hard,” Despain said.
He received a big scrape that started on his lower led and went up. More than two months laster, he still has a scar, on, well, “my butt.”
That’s not all. One of the runners near him stepped on his fingers, and another tried to jump over him but ended up kicking him in the head.
“I don’t blame them,” Despain said. “It all happened so fast.”
Near the end of his junior season, just when he was hitting his stride, Despain got sick. He went on to finish 34th at state. It was 19 places higher than his sophomore year, but not quite what he was hoping for.
“He didn’t have a particularly strong race at state [in 2014],” Sequim coach Harold Huff said.
“He was coming off a respiratory infection, and I felt sorry because he had been running really well.
“He was disappointed with state, but it wasn’t his fault.”
This slip wasn’t really his fault, either. He just took a corner too quick, and if not for all that mud . . .
No excuses.
Despain’s chances for an individual district championship were all but gone, but, and this was much more important, the Wolves needed him to win the team title.
Running alongside of and being encouraged by freshman teammate Ash Francis for much of the remainder of the race, Despain finished eighth.
Jackson Oliver was the top Sequim placer at sixth, Francis took ninth, Wendall Lorenzen was 14th and Chris Jeffko came in 17th.
Had Despain or any of those other four finished a spot or two lower, the Wolves would have been denied their third straight district crown. Instead, they edged Liberty of Issaquah 54 to 55.
“That’s probably one of my favorite moments,” he said.
“Even though I didn’t do my best, Jackson and Ash pulled through and we won districts.
“It was fun. That was a good day, despite everything that went wrong.”
When Despain moved to the North Olympic Peninsula from the Tri-Cities area before his sophomore year, he was leaving 3A cross country powerhouse Kamiakin and would be joining a young but talented Sequim team. Perfect fit.
“I was tickled pink,” Huff said. “He was good from the get-go. And we were already going to be good, he just made us that much better.”
Despain, Oliver, Jeffko, Lorenzen, C.J. Daniels and Christian Ash were all sophomores, and Mikey Cobb and Peter Ohnstad were juniors that first year at Sequim.
“We kind of had a really young group, so we were able to mature as runners together,” Despain said.
“We all grew as a team.”
And the team’s accomplishments became more important than individual success.
With those eight runners, the Wolves claimed their first district championship and took fifth at state in 2013. They won districts again and placed second at state in 2014.
Then, without Ohnstad and Cobb but with Francis, came this season’s third district title and a third-place finish at state.
The team’s success was so important that Despain forgot about writing down before the season that he wanted to finish in the top 10 at state.
“I didn’t really look at it until December,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh, wait, I got ninth. I did it.’”
Despain hasn’t decided whether he will keep running at the college level or to “try new things.”
Either way, he’ll keep running. In fact, some time before June, he wants to run 26.2 miles.
“I’m making a goal: I want to run a marathon before I graduate,” Despain said.
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
