Off and Running: Aggies set for inaugural season

LAWTON, Okla. (Sept. 8) – Cameron University men’s cross country coach Matt Aguero sits in his office doing the math. He counts the number of miles his team has logged on the streets surrounding the Cameron campus. He adds and subtracts as he figures travel costs, scholarships and two-mile split times. But mostly, he counts the days until the Aggie cross country program officially makes its debut.

Men’s cross country is one of two new sports added to the Aggie athletic program beginning with the 2005-06 school year, and with women’s golf set to make its first competitive appearance later this month, Aguero’s crew will be the first of the fledgling programs to test the waters. Their first shot comes this weekend at the East Central University Tiger Chase in Ada, and Aguero – a former all-region selection at ECU – is anxious to hit the ground running.

"I’m excited about our team," Aguero said. "We’re very young, but we have done really well in our preseason workouts and I think we’ll surprise some people. These guys were used to running 30-40 miles a week in high school and we’re asking them to train twice as hard now at the college level. A lot of them aren’t used to logging that many miles yet, but we’re taking it slow and they’re going to do a good job."

Leading the way for the Aggies as they start the season is a trio of local products. Aguero says Matt Moreno, an All-Stater and Top 10 individual finisher in the Class 3A state meet as a senior last year at Marlow High School, is running better than ever and calls Central High freshman Jon McMaster the hardest worker on the team. Another Marlow product, Frank Fleming, was a three-time All-Stater with the Outlaws and is a star in the making, according to Aguero.

Rounding out the lineup for the Aggies at this week’s ECU run are two more area athletes – Andrew Braisier of Walters and Lawton High School product Jeremiah Wolverton. All five runners are true freshmen.

"We don’t have a single guy on our team who has an ounce of collegiate experience," Aguero concedes. "But I like the direction we’re heading and there is no reason we can’t compete right away."

And competing is something Aguero knows a little something about. A native of Poteau, Okla., Aguero was a member of the men's cross country and track teams at East Central from 1999-2003, earning All-Region and Lone Star Conference All-Academic honors with the Tigers. He holds the ECU marathon record and was a three-time qualifier for the National Track and Field Championships. Aguero also spent one semester at Minot State University in North Dakota, where he also established a school marathon record and earned NAIA All-American honors by finishing third in the marathon at the 2004 NAIA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

Following his successful collegiate career, Aguero entered the coaching ranks last season as the assistant cross country and track coach at Virginia Intermont College, where he helped guide the Cobras to the 2004 NAIA men's cross country national title in just its second year of existence. VIC also collected runner-up team finishes at both the NAIA Indoor and Outdoor Track National Championships this spring.

"The first day of practice this year, I told our guys a little about myself and what I had done in my career," Aguero said. "I think just hearing those words – ‘All-American’ – go a long way. I’ve been a part of a national championship and I told them that we are doing the same things here that they are doing right now at VIC. I think that motivated them and let them know that they’re going to have an opportunity to succeed here at Cameron."

But telling a group of college freshmen about your accomplishments and showing them are two entirely different approaches and, not being one to shy away from competition, Aguero put his money where his mouth is this summer. In August, he and nine of his former teammates and acquaintances at East Central hatched a plan to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. The group set out to break the mark for a 100-mile relay held by a track club in the United Kingdom. With only a few weeks to plot strategy and train for the task, Aguero and the group shattered the record by more than an hour, finishing with a world-record time of 8:28:04 – a pace of just over five minutes a mile.

"I like to lead by example," Aguero said.