By Christopher Hunt
Every year, no matter what happens, Fayetteville-Manilus coach Bill Aris will never compare his current team to a past team. Every year is a brand new team, he’ll say. Even if all runners are the same.
Well, this year his assessment is a little more accurate. The four-time national champs lost 4 seniors to graduation and 3 of the top 7 from last year’s title squad. Add to that, assistant coach John Aris will no longer be with the high school team this season but will handle head coaching duties for the Nike-sponsored Stotan Racing Team, which Bill and John co-founded.
With the type of talent that saw them become the first team in state history to score a perfect 15 points at the state meet last year, it’s still difficult to say the team is rebuilding. More like remodeling.
“Every team in those last four years was a different team,” Bill Aris said. “The whole culture and climate of the team is different.”
This team will different without Molly Malone (Syracuse), Hannah Luber (Iowa) and McKenzie Carter (Washington). Courtney Chapman, who’s been on all four national champion teams, is returning for her senior campaign alongside juniors Katie Sisco and Heather Martin and sophomore Jillian Fanning.
Then there is sophomore transfer Katie Brislin, who lives about a half-mile from FM, went to middle school in the district but spend her freshman year at Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse. She was seventh in Class C at the state meet last year for CBA.
“We spent some time getting her acclaimed to our way of doing things but she’s doing well,” Aris said. “She’ll be on of the pieces. Where she is, I’m not sure. I’m fairly confident she’ll be in our top 7.”
There’s no question that, barring injury, Brislin will be in the top 5. But that is also the way that Aris operates with his team. Nothing is earned until it’s earned. Success isn’t achieved until you’ve won.
This year’s team is projected by everyone to be the best team in the county again, partly based on the team on paper, partly on reputation. As dominate as F-M teams have been known to be, last year’s squad was merciless in the way they crushed the competition at the state meet and stormed the front at the Nike Cross Nationals, leading by 200 points after 2 kilometers. They were like a stampede. Aris couldn’t say whether that attitude will cross over.
“The team identity is forming,” he said. “The identity of this team, I don’t think we aspire to be like last year’s team of killers. We aspire to be this year’s version of killers.”
As usual the team doesn’t need to search far for competition. Saratoga Springs, the No. 2-ranked team in the country, was second at NXN last year, strikes a similarity to last year’s F-M team. Saratoga enjoys a wealth of depth, returning 4 of its top 6 and adding Margaret MacDonald, who ran 2:13.00 in 800 meters last spring. Then there’s No. 3 Saugus (Calif.), which is returning 6 of its top 7 on the team that finished fourth at NXN last year.
“I look at Saratoga and I look at Saugus and I look at track times and they should be right up there, equal with us or better than us,” the coach said. “I wouldn’t argue with anyone saying they are better because the times are fact. The times are out there.
But there are going to be a lot of people that think we are better than we are and there will be people that don’t think we are as good as we’re going to be. If I do my job we’ll be closer to the good side.”
Reach Christopher Hunt at chunt@armorytrack.com