11 pages in SI on high school runners.

And when they called me last month about why I was not renewing my subscription, I told them it was because there wasn't any track coverage.

That was one sweet article and very well written. It is nice to see SI hitting up cross country and track (had Pappas as the main feature a couple weeks back). That coach is an inspiration, as are those kids.

yes, excellent work

i agree that was a great read, it was touching and inspirational, sometimes we take things for granted, i know ive had a couple hispanic guys on my old college team that had some pretty rough upbringings, not only were they the hardest workers but some of the best people ive ever met, and never took anything for granted.

The only reason SI ran the story is because the kids are hispanic. That rag is so PC - anti-white (look at how often they'll remind you whites can't compete at the top levels ... blah blah blah) it isn't even funny. Take off the rose tinted glasses of PC induced liberal guilt and look at the spin that bird-cage liner has taken over the years.

Does anyone know where I can find a link to the article online?

Thank you, Realist, very little for your jaundiced opinion.

No matter how I twist it, including your view, it's still an 11 page story about running worth sharing in the largest mainstream sports magazine in America (world?).

Your PC argument is laughable. There's not another mag out there w/a wider range of excellent sports reporting.

What weighs on my mind is what direction the McFarland team will take w/Jim White's retirement.

Realist, you are so full of sh!t that the whites of your eyes are turning brown. SI has run stories of all-white basketball teams in impoverished areas and how they've overcome the odds. This team just happened to be hispanic.

No matter how bright the sun is shining, some people only see the clouds.

SI is the one of the whitest magazines around. ever read rick reilly? that guy thinks a tatoo is the decline of civilization. he went out of his way to bust the chops of sammy sosa and barry bonds, but fawned over mark mcgwire.

Worth the Wait

by Rick Reilly

Why do they come? Why do they hang around to watch the slowest high school cross-country runner in America? Why do they want to see a kid finish the 3.1 miles in 51 minutes when the winner did it in 16?

Why do they cry? Why do they nearly break their wrists applauding a junior who falls flat on his face almost every race? Why do they hug a teenager who could be beaten by any other kid running backward?

Why do they do it? Why do all of his teammates go back out on the course and run the last 10 minutes of every race with him? Why do other teams do it too? And the girls' teams? Why run all the way back out there to pace a kid running like a tortoise with bunions?

Why?

Because Ben Comen never quits.

See, Ben has a heart just slightly larger than the Chicago Hyatt. He also has cerebral palsy. The disease doesn't mess with his intellect -- he gets A's and B's -- but it seizes his muscles and contorts his body and gives him the balance of a Times Square drunk. Yet there he is, competing for the Hanna High cross-country team in Anderson, S.C., dragging that wracked body over rocks and fallen branches and ditches. And people ask, Why?

"Because I feel like I've been put here to set an example," says Ben, 16. "Anybody can find something they can do -- and do it well. I like to show people that you can either stop trying or you can pick yourself up and keep going. It's just more fun to keep going."

It must be, because faced with what Ben faces, most of us would quit.

Imagine what it feels like for Ben to watch his perfectly healthy twin, Alex, or his younger brother, Chris, run like rabbits for Hanna High, while Ben runs like a man whacking through an Amazon thicket. Imagine never beating anybody to the finish line. Imagine dragging along that stubborn left side, pulling that unbending tire iron of a leg around to the front and pogo-sticking off it to get back to his right.

Worse, he lifts his feet so little that he trips on anything -- a Twinkie-sized rock, a licorice-thick branch, the cracks between linoleum tiles. But he won't let anybody help him up. "It messes up my flow," he says. He's not embarrassed, just mad.

Worst, he falls hard. His brain can't send signals fast enough for his arms to cushion his fall, so he often smacks his head or his face or his shoulder. Sometimes his mom, Joan, can't watch.

"I've been coaching cross-country for 31 years," says Hanna's Chuck Parker, "and I've never met anyone with the drive that Ben has. I don't think there's an inch of that kid I haven't had to bandage up."

But never before Ben finishes the race. Like Rocky Marciano, Ben finishes bloody and bruised, but never beaten. Oh, he always loses -- Ben barely finishes ahead of the sunset, forget other runners. But he hasn't quit once. Through rain, wind or welt, he always crosses the finish line.

Lord, it's some sight when he gets there: Ben clunking his way home, shepherded by all those kids, while the cheerleaders screech and parents try to holler encouragement, only to find nothing coming out of their voice boxes.

The other day Ben was coming in with his huge army, Ben's Friends, his face stoplight red and tortured, that laborious gait eating up the earth inch by inch, when he fell not 10 yards from the line. There was a gasp from the parents and a second of silence from the kids. But then Ben went through the 15-second process of getting his bloody knees under him, his balance back and his forward motion going again -- and he finished. From the roar you'd have thought he just won Boston.

"Words can't describe that moment," says his mom. "I saw grown men just stand there and cry."

Ben can get to you that way. This is a kid who builds wheelchair ramps for Easter Seals, spends nights helping at an assisted-living home, mans a drill for Habitat for Humanity, devotes hours to holding the hand of a disabled neighbor, Miss Jessie, and plans to run a marathon and become a doctor. Boy, the youth of today, huh?

Oh, one aside: Hanna High is also the home of a mentally challenged man known as Radio, who has been the football team's assistant for more than 30 years. Radio gained national attention in a 1996 Sports Illustrated story by Gary Smith and is the hero of a major movie that opens nationwide on Oct. 24.

Feel like you could use a little dose of humanity? Get yourself to Hanna. And while you're there, go out and join Ben's Friends.

You'll be amazed what a little jog can do for your heart.

I remember when that article came out -- what a great story.

Realist, I don't see how a magazine that is most responsible for treating golf as if it mattered could be called "anti-white."

RW did an article on McFarland H.S. about a decade ago. Great story. A lot of their team's parents are migrant farm workers.

Gary Smith and Rick Reilly are two of the best writers in America - period. My 14 year old son has basically learned how to write extremely well by lapping up everything these two have written for the last seven years or so.

i never said rick reilly wasn't a good sportswriter, he's an excellent one.

what i said was that he praised mark mcgwire end on end for restoring baseballs greatness, yet has gone out of his way to hound sammy sosa (confronting him in the locker room to take a drug test) and barry bonds (access any column of his that references bonds, and its never anything positive)

hardly an anti-white bias.

GREAT read...was skimming the new SI at bedtime last night and lo and behold, here was this incredible story...needless to say, it cut into my zzzzzzzzzzz time...but worth it!

MF