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March 14, 2010 It’s not
every day that a Novi High School sports program sends an
athlete on to intercollegiate competition. But over the
past week Novi Cross Country has had not one but two of its
runner ink letters of intent to compete at the next level:
Mike Blaszczyk and Dan Egner. Mike, the brother of Miss Michigan, Nicole Blaszczyk, will be headed to St. Francis, an NAIA school southwest of Chicago in Joliet. There he’ll run for Drew Ludtke, long time director of Wolverine Cross Country Camp, which Novi attends annually during the last week of July. Mike thinks that played a key role in his recruitment. Familiarity with Ludtke made Mike feel “more at home” with St. Francis. It’s worth noting that Mike’s decision came down to two conference rivals, St. Francis and Olivet Nazarene University, in Bourbonnais, Illinois. He had a personal connection with UNO as well; Kenny MacDonough, Mike’s former teammate at Novi, is currently the Tigers top runner. Mike hopes to study marketing at St. Francis, and has a team first attitude towards his future at St. Francis. When I asked him what goals he had for his collegiate running career, the first thing he mentioned was getting his team to cross country nationals. Coming from such a strong high school program, it’s no wonder Mike’s goal is to replicate that team success at the next level. Dan is headed just down M-14 to Eastern Michigan, and says proximity was the number one factor for him. Also, Dan is excited about the Animation Simulation and Gaming Major offered at Eastern. Mike ran cross country and track all four of his years at Novi, but Dan took a much more interesting path to becoming a collegiate runner. He played both basketball and baseball his freshman year, before making the unorthodox switch to cross country and track starting his sophomore year. If he could go back and redo high school, changing anything, he says he would have definitely ran his freshman year in both the fall and spring. Dan has been told that he’ll redshirt his first year, and already has his eyes set on a spot on the varsity team of a program with 6 track national championships to its name. While they took very different routes their present status as leaders of the Novi Cross Country and Track squads, there is one thing that both Mike and Dan agree on: the importance of Coach Smith in their running, and personal, lives. Mike “can’t express how grateful” he is to have had Smith as a coach, and says he just calls him coach because “he’s the only coach to me.” Mike explains his commitment to running by saying running for Smith was “almost like trying to make your father proud…he gave me the inspiration to never give up.” Dan too says Smith has made a huge impact in his life. “Smith really changed the way I see the world. He helped me learn how to work hard in everything I do. He is the best coach I have ever had in any sport.” In talking to Mike and Dan, I can see the immense value that sports have added to their life. The lessons they’ve learned from Coach Smith, and through running, now affect their daily non-athletic lives. I’d argue those are life lessons that may not have been taught without sports. I guess it’s just another reason to be thankful we live in America, one of the only countries in the world that combine sports with school. (c) 2010 Novi
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(Cronyism
alert: as you know I’ve been intimately involved with Novi
Cross Country for about seven years now, and further both
Mike and Dan (left) are close friends. I don’t think either
of these realities has shrouded my judgment that this is a
story worth telling however.)