No Benches, No Half-Time, No Time-Outs….. Welcome to GU Cross Country

This is the GU track that GU Cross Country and Track teams dominate on during practices and meets. (Credit: Ryan Taylor)

The Greenville University Sports Program shows a great deal of talent that showcases on a field or track that eventually walks across the stage at graduation. One of the most successful programs that GU has is the Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Team. Throughout the 127 years that GU has been an institution, the talent that ‘ran’ cross country is astounding. The GU Cross Country program is one of the most accomplished teams at GU with 16 conference championships for the women’s cross country and 15 conference championships for the men’s cross country. The men’s team won the championship just last year.

Men’s Cross Country 2018 SLIAC Conference Champs Video.
(Credit: Greenville University YouTube Channel)

To being a winning culture, as the Cross Country team is, you need a great leader and for the past 25 years they had that great leader. He is a Hall of Famer, Brian Patton. “What makes our Cross Country team so special, I’m going to say relationship”, as said by Coach Patton when talking about his program. Knowing what type of athletic programs that GU has, there is a lot of Hall of Famers that come watch and talk to the new players that the program is built on now. Coach Patton still has great connections with his former players and Hall of Famers. In fact, he stated that he just talked to some of his former players on the phone last week. 

Greenville University is a D3 school. However, our teams deal with a lot of situations that D1 and D2 programs have to deal with. The team that deals with the most out of them all are the Cross Country team. “We don’t have an indoor track and other people usually don’t want to do things in those types of conditions but, I’m proud of my team and past teams to work through that” explained Coach Patton. Working through types of adversities definitely makes runners stronger.

These are four Hall of Famers that GU Cross Country have in H.J Gym.
(Credit: Ryan Taylor)

Being an important program, GU Cross Country has a lot of Hall of Famers. These Hall of Famers are in the great H.J gym in front of the doors of the gym where our Ladies and Men’s Basketball team do amazing feats and hopefully, do so this year as well. The names that are in the Hall of Fame for Cross Country is amazing and means a lot to people that are still on GU campus, live in Greenville, and the runners that are here today to represent GU. There are so many names that are in the GU Cross Country Hall of Fame but, names that are shown in the legendary H.J gym. They are Richard H. Weinhandl, Wesley G. Porter, Lanny J. Conner, and David M. Johnson. The legends in the sport of Cross Country show the runners at GU should be built to live up to their status and make our Cross Country team best in the SLIAC. In the incoming days, the 1999 GU Cross Country team is going to be introduced into the Hall of Fame as well with the legendary coach, Brian Patton.


Media: Ryan Taylor


2 COMMENTS

Leave a Reply to James Browne Cancel reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here