Champions' TriBUne Archive

By: Ryan Day         

Champions' TriBUne is a special feature through Baylor Athletics that gives you the student-athlete's perspective and the chance for them to share their own story. Ryan Day, a redshirt sophomore from Waco, joined the cross country team last year as a walk-on and was a scoring runner at both the Big 12 and NCAA region meets.  An engineering major, Ryan was a district cross country and 1,600-meter champion at Midway High School. Baylor will host the Big 12 Cross Country Championships at 10 a.m. Saturday at Cottonwood Creek Golf Course:
        
I've been running for a while now.  My first distinct memory of running is what my family affectionately refers to as "The Labor Day 100." I was about 3 years old and had just learned that you could actually count to 100. That was about the biggest number my 3-year-old brain could fathom— so naturally I decided to run that many laps around our living room couch. The story goes that my mom counted out the laps for me while I waddled around the living room in typical toddler fashion.  I don't know that I actually made 100 laps. I doubt anyone had a watch on me either, but I do remember that I felt pretty pleased with myself afterwards.
        
Much later, in middle school, I joined the cross country team on a whim. Some of my soccer teammates were participating for the extra conditioning and recommended that I join them after school for practice. The first practice was tough. It was a scorching early September afternoon in Waco, and the workout consisted of alternating periods of sprinting and jogging. It was the first time I seriously pushed my limits in a workout and,while it was utterly exhausting, I found that I really enjoyed it. Our first race, I placed seventh. A month or two later, I won my first race. I began to realize that not only did I enjoy running, I had some natural ability within the sport as well.
        
In high school, I continued running. As a freshman, it was a bit of a shock to go from winning tiny middle school races to being buried in the back of the pack with high schoolers. I didn't worry too much, I trusted that if I kept doing my best I would be back at the front eventually. I had some great teammates to run with (one of them being Cal Johnston), and I gradually improved. My times began to drop as well. At the end of my junior year, I ran 4:26 in the mile. It was then that I first realized that collegiate running could be a possibility. Previously, I had dreamed of running at the university level, but I wasn't sure that was realistic. After that race, I realized if I kept working hard an opportunity might open up.
        
I had known that Baylor was where I'd like to go to college for some time, so senior year I applied and contacted Coach Jon Capron about the possibilities of walking on. It took some time for a walk-on opportunity to open up, so I trained on my own for freshman year. At times, it was difficult to stay motivated. I was running without any guarantee that I'd make it on the team, however beginning my sophomore year, we began the process of walking on. My first practice with the team finally came in late October, about a week before the Big 12 Championship at Iowa State. Even though I was very much a newcomer to the team, I was selected to travel with the squad to Ames. It was a very surreal experience— in the space of a week, I went from running on my own to competing in the green and gold.


        
Our next race was the NCAA Regional in College Station. That was a tough race for me and really for the team as a whole. The course was exceptionally muddy after days of rain in the area and, to be brutally honest, I had not prepared well enough to run 10k at that level. That was perhaps the first time I threw all my effort into a race yet came away truly unsatisfied in my performance. I knew I needed to do more in training to be competitive at the collegiate level. I focused on improving my training for the remainder of that winter into the spring. Soon, school adjourned for the summer and I kept running.  It was this past summer where I first started to get some glimpses of improvement. I was running more miles. I was feeling faster, stronger. When the team regrouped in August, I found it a little easier to do workouts that used to feel very difficult. My race times have improved as well. While that's exciting, I know there's much more work to be done.
        
Now, I don't know that my story is really all that extraordinary, but I think it serves as a fitting backdrop to the question I often find myself asking: What am I running for? Is it true that I run because I relish the competition? Is it because I enjoy the camaraderie of running with my teammates? Or, is it the sense of satisfaction that one derives from consistently working to develop a skill? While I can truthfully answer "yes" to these questions, I think the real reason I'm running is more complex. At its core, the reason I run is intrinsically connected to my faith in Christ. 



I know that running is an ability God has entrusted to me for the time being. As such, my desire is to use the gift to its fullest as a testimony to the Lord. Paul writes that "God works in all of us. In everything we do," and Peter elaborates further that we should "be good servants of God's gifts of grace, so that in everything God will be praised." It is in this light that I strive to be the best runner I can be— so that I might be a good steward of the talent God has given me, and ultimately so that God may be glorified.
        
In scripture, running a race is a frequent analogy to the Christian life as it requires us to hone our self-discipline in an athlete-like manner. 1 Corinthians reminds us that "all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. So run to win! All those who compete in a race exercise self-control so they can win a crown. That crown only lasts a short time, but our crown will last forever." As you might suspect, such comparisons are all the more compelling for an individual who runs races on a semi-weekly basis. I can see the physical discipline involved in daily training as an example of the discipline I ought to develop in life. Whenever pursuing my faith gets tiring, and it becomes tempting to ease up, I try to tap into the same sort of mental strength I know I employ when a race begins to get tough. In that sense, running holds me accountable. Like in the 8k, there is a finish line out there— and even if it seems like a long way off, I know that I can't afford to back off the pace. When my time competing in physical races is over, that spiritual race will still be out there. And I intend to run it like I run any of my races: as best I can, for the glory of God.



Previous Champions' TriBUne Features
Women's Cross Country - Lindsay Walton (Oct. 15, 2019)
Men's Basketball - Obim Okeke (Oct. 1, 2019)
Volleyball - Gia Milana (Sept. 17, 2019)
Soccer - Raegan Padgett (Sept. 5, 2019) 
Football - Sam Tecklenburg (Aug. 29, 2019)
Men's Golf - Cooper Dossey (July 11, 2019)
Baseball - Richard Cunningham (June 27, 2019)
Men's Tennis - Jimmy Bendeck (June 14, 2019)
Baseball - Shea Langeliers (May 30, 2019) 
Women's Track & Field - Kiana Horton (May 22, 2019)
Men's Golf - Garrett May (May 9, 2019)
Women's Golf - Maria Vesga (May 2, 2019)
Acrobatics & Tumbling - Camryn Bryant (April 25, 2019)
Equestrian - Shannon Hogue (April 16, 2019)
Women's Tennis - Angelina Shakhraichuk (April 9, 2019) 
Women's Basketball - Lauren Cox (March 22, 2019)
Men's Track & Field - Wil London (March 7, 2019)
Men's Basketball - Jake Lindsey (March 4, 2019)
Softball - Nicky Dawson (Feb. 21, 2019)
Baseball - Josh Bissonette (Feb. 14, 2019)
Men's Tennis - Will Little (Jan. 31, 2019)
Men's Basketball - King McClure (Jan. 17, 2019)
Women's Basketball - Chloe Jackson (Jan. 3, 2019)
Football - Blake Blackmar (Dec. 13, 2018)
Volleyball - Braya Hunt (Nov. 29, 2018)
Soccer - Jackie Crowther (Nov. 16, 2018)
Women's Cross Country - Alison Andrews-Paul (Nov. 8, 2018)
Football- Ira Lewis (Nov. 6, 2018)