High school athletes run 18 miles to fulfill pie promise
Published 5:00 pm Monday, December 15, 2014
- Zane Hull (left) and Kaden Overstreet, seniors on the Lamar (Mo.) High School cross country team, recently surprised football coach Scott Bailey by running 18 miles to Cooky's Cafe in Golden City to buy him a pie -- something he'd been egging them on to do for four years.
LAMAR, Mo. — It was the same good-natured ribbing nearly every day for four years: “If you’re going to run all that distance,” football coach Scott Bailey would tell cross country runners at Lamar High School as they got ready to train, “then make yourselves useful and run over to Cooky’s Cafe and get me a piece of pie.”
The decades-old diner, renowned for its homemade pies, sits 18 miles east of Lamar in Golden City, and a stretch even for cross-country runners. A standard distance in cross-country meets is five kilometers, or 3.1 miles. During the cross country season, runners might log as many as 10 miles at a time but usually not more.
But last weekend, two Lamar seniors finally showed Bailey their mettle and set out to bring him back the pie he’d jokingly requested.
“The seniors before us had always talked about it,” said Kaden Overstreet. “They’d say, ‘Next week we’ll go.’ But then the day would come and they’d be busy or the weather would be bad and it just never happened.”
Zane Hull said he and Overstreet knew they’d attempt it before they graduated; it was just a matter of setting their minds to it.
To make it more of a challenge, their season ended Nov. 8. Overstreet and Hull had run only a few times since and just three miles each time.
But with the dead of winter looming, followed by gearing up for track season and then graduation, “We kind of thought it was now or never,” Overstreet said. “It was just a matter of getting up and going.”
The school’s athletic banquet was slated for Sunday night, so Saturday, the two decided conditions were right. The weather was good for distance running: overcast and on the cool side.
“Still, it was the farthest distance we’ve gone at one time,” Overstreet said.
Although intended as a surprise, Bailey got an inkling of what was going on when his phone rang on Sunday morning.
“My nephew Peyton (Bailey) is on the cross country team, too, and they convinced him to ride along on his bike and carry water and food,” Bailey said. “My brother called me and said, ‘These idiots are really doing it. They’re running all the way to Golden City.’”
Overstreet’s mother, Melissa Overstreet, drove to Cooky’s to bring the pie back safely, as the two runners knew they could only run one way. They did the distance.
“That night, we took the mic at the banquet and gave Coach his pie,” Kaden said.
Bailey, who is in his ninth year coaching, said he was simultaneously amused and proud of the two runners’ determination and fortitude.
“Now I have to do my own running to run off that piece of pie,” Bailey said.