MICK McCABE: Ace runner shifts easily to basketball
January 14, 2005
BY MICK MCCABE
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Most high-caliber athletes who play multiple sports like to take a week or so off between seasons. Not Justin Switzer.
Switzer had about a 30-second break between sports. That was the amount of time it took his grandmother to remember that basketball practice had begun 10 minutes after he arrived home from the airport.
Instead of resting his weary legs the day after he earned All-America cross-country honors, Switzer grabbed his basketball gear and raced to practice. Two days later he was in the Waterford Kettering lineup and scored 12 points in a victory.
"I was extremely tired after that first game," said Switzer, a 6-foot-1, 155-pound senior. "The muscles in my legs were extremely sore."
How could he be sore? Hadn't he been running an ungodly number of miles since the summer?
"I had the endurance to play the entire game," Switzer said. "But the sprinting and the sideways movements mean using different muscles. There's no jumping in cross-country."
Oh, sure there is, and Switzer proved it last month in San Diego when he finished seventh in the country. He jumped right over a bunch of runners who figured to beat him at the Foot Locker national championships.
After winning the Division 1 state title, Switzer was only fifth in the regional at Kenosha, Wis. The top eight in each region advanced to the nationals, and if you did the math, you couldn't have liked Switzer's chances of accomplishing much in the finals.
Of course, Switzer, who signed with the University of Michigan, knew better.
"The condition of the course at the regional was not very good," he said. "It was just a wreck. It was muddy and with my style of running I need a hard surface. My goal was just to qualify for nationals. I felt a lot of pressure to get out of the regionals. It was all that was on my mind."
Switzer was 27th in the 2003 national championships, and his greatest fear was that he might not qualify for a return trip. When he did qualify, the pressure was gone at the finals.
"I just wanted to go out and surprise people," he said. "My strategy worked out perfectly. I knew the field would go out extremely hard the first mile. I wanted to lay back and make my way up through the field."
Switzer's goal was to finish in the top 10, which he did, giving him All-America recognition.
But in the time it took him to find his basketball stuff and drive to practice, Switzer went from All-America to all-league.
A year ago Switzer earned All-Oakland Activities Association honors by averaging 19 points a game for the Captains.
"I've coached a long time, and this is the first time my best player for three straight years had basketball as his other sport," said Kettering basketball coach Phil Dawson. "The nice thing is even though he couldn't practice with us before the finals, he was still coming in and shooting with us."
Not only did he shoot with the Captains, Switzer threw down an occasional dunk. That probably wasn't the smartest move, considering a bad landing could have ended his cross-country season and All-America aspirations.
A shoulder injury caused Switzer to miss his second game with the basketball team, but in the past week he has scored 21, 18 and 23 points in three consecutive victories. That told him he was finally in basketball shape.
"It took me a little longer to get back in shape than I thought," he said. "The break helped. Two weeks of practice got me ready. I've got my jumps back."
He also has his teammates back.
Technically speaking, cross-country is a team sport, but when push comes to shove it is the most individualistic of sports. Sure, you have teammates, but their performances usually don't dictate whether you win or lose.
Basketball is the complete opposite, and Switzer had no difficulty converting from an individual sport to a team sport.
"Anything that involves competition, I take seriously," he said. "I put my full energy into everything.
"It's good to have guys to hang out with and be part of a team concept again."