The 'Rodfather' dedicated to his runners

By Tony Dondero
Enterprise reporter

On his answering machine King's cross country coach Rod Wilcox will tell you that if he's not at home he's probably at the Woolsey Stadium track on the King's High School campus.

Until Oct. 24, the Friday before the Cascade Conference Championshsips, Wilcox hadn't missed a practice in 16 years. A root canal broke the streak.

The man King's athletes call the Rodfather and sensei came to King's program in the mid-1990s and built it up from small group of athletes into a state powerhouse.

Over the years Wilcox has trained hundreds of student-athletes. He doesn't have kids at home but he considers the kids he coaches from middle school through high school like his own kids. He has encyclopedic knowledge about all the athletes on his team. He cared enough to build a series of trails on campus in his spare time that is designed to test them.

Wilcox's boys teams have won four Class 1A state titles (1999-2002) and his girls teams have won five state titles (1A in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007 and 2A in 2006). The 2001 boys team was statistically the best boys team, according to Wilcox. The 2007 girls team was his best team but this year's team, which is expected to win its third straight title this Saturday at Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco, could be better. As head coach he's had four individual champions: Adam Roe in 2000, Brandon Thompson in 2002, Rachel Strand in 2002 and Olivia Thomas in 2007.

But for Wilcox, a three-time state cross country coaches' association coach of the year, it's about helping his athletes no matter how talented they are achieve their best.

"It's not about winning championships," he said. "It's about watching the next batch of kids."

Alex Croutworst, who went on to run at Northwest Univeristy in Kirkland, calls Wilcox his "favorite coach I have had and ever will have."

"I came into running as a seventh grader and could not break a seven-minute mile," Croutworst wrote in a e-mail. "At that point, Rod treated me the same as when I won the two-mile at state (in track) my senior year. This is the key to how Rod developed me as a runner. He looked at the character of the person combined with their effort and not where they ended up placing at the end of the day in a race or even. Sure, he longed for us to compete well and win, but that was not his ultimate focus."

Wilcox said he learned from legendary Mead High School cross country coach Pat Tyson "that you have to treat your worst runner the same as your best runner.

"Of course the old saying that they only care what you know if they know that you care goes a long way," he said. "My runners know I put everything I have into helping each one of them get better. I chart every time trial, race time, and splits of every runner."

Rachel Strand Zupke, who won a state title in 2002, and went on to play basketball and row for Seattle Pacific, said Wilcox's athletes never doubted that Rod cared for them.

"Whether it's building new trails or conjuring up another crazy way to work our abs or hip flexors, he was always focused on making us better no matter if it went into his personal time," Strand wrote in an e-mail.

Wilcox's training put her in such great shape that when Strand had to run a mile as a preseason conditioning test for the Seattle Pacific basketball team as a freshman, she beat her teammates by 20 seconds.

Wilcox once learned from a youth coach that "the eye is everything," for a coach.

"You have to be able to see the ideal," he said. "You look at a runner and figure what they're doing right or wrong in a split second."

That's developed through studying video and experience, Wilcox said.

It's nice to have a runner that is light on their feet and who has a nice stride, he said, but the most important characteristics are heart dedication.

"Corss country runners are all guts," Wilcox said.

Wilcox himself never ran cross country or distances and by his own admission was never good at it.

Wilcox spent most of his childhood in Pendleton, Ore. but his family moved to Yakima and he graduated from West Valley High School in 1983. He did track, specializing in the high jump and played wide receiver on the football team. He ran sprints and did jumps at Yakima Valley Community College, until a noncancerous tumor in his tibia had to be removed and cut short his career. He transferred to the University of Washington and majored in psychology and did not plan to continue with track and field.

But when a friend mentioned the high jump pits at Husky Stadium were left out at night Wilcox decided to inch his way back into jumping. He met a former Washington State jumper who started coaching him and he went from jumping under six feet to 6-feet, 6 inches. He talked to then coach Ken Shannon about joining the team.

"I didn't call it a walk on, it was a beg on," Wilcox said. Shannon let him compete and Wilcox topped out at 6-8 ¾ at UW with his personal best of 6-10 coming later.

Wilcox at the time had an interest in coaching so he enrolled at the University of Western Australia and studied sports psychology.

In talking with top coaches, he learned that "coaching isn't so much about knowledge but being a leader."

He came back to the states in 1991 and talked to UW coaches about pursuing a college coaching career. He soon realized he would have to travel around the country moving from school to school for awhile until he found a home.

"I really didn't want that lifestyle," he said.

Wilcox gave up coaching and started personal training in 1992 and had a client, Graham Epperson, a sprinter who went to King's.

"He wanted me to come and coach and talked me into coming out," Wilcox said.

Wilcox met track coach and current King's athletic director Dan Blackmer and started coaching jumps.

He found that Blackmer was passionate about the sport and was excited about the athletes. The kids were passionate too.

"The kids were eager and willing to work hard and that kind of roped me into the track team," Wilcox said.

Wilcox didn't start assisting the cross country team until the fall of 1994 under then coach Bill McLean. It was a small group and the girls team had a trouble even fielding a team. King's had its first state champion in that time, however, Amy King who won the 1A title as a junior in 1995. McLean left after the 1995 season and Wilcox stepped into the position.

"I didn't want to leave the kids I had been with for two years," Wilcox said.

Despite his lack of knowledge of cross country, Wilcox gradually learned and built the program up. When the boys team broke through and won the 1A title in 1999 and Roe won an individual title in 2000, Wilcox had established something special.

"I had him in junior high," Wilcox said of Roe. "I saw him come up through the system. Breaking through with one kind of showed the path for the rest of them."

With nine state championships under his belt, Wilcox would like to challenge Mead's all-time state record of 15.

Despite all the success, Wilcox still has the passion he had when he started out and so do the athletes who encourage each other and cheer each other on as they finish every meet.

"Seeing the young kids coming up, the look in their eye the hunger, the eagerness," is what keeps Wilcox going.