Double duty
Four Mission athletes compete in both volleyball and cross country
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It takes a lot of dedication to be a high school athlete. There’s no time to sleep in, when there’s a practice waiting for you and school to get to. There’s practice every night and then there’s the long bus rides to games and in those rare moments when you think you have some free time, there’s always homework to do. But for four Mission girls committing to one fall sport wasn’t enough.
Ashley Courville, Rose Bear Don’t Walk, LaGlen Mitchell and Jane Makepeace all pulled double duty this fall, playing on the Lady Bulldog volleyball team and running on the cross country team.
When Courville, the biggest distance runner of the bunch, discovered that Mission was going to have a cross country team for the first time in school history, she started recruiting her fellow volleyball teammates, so they would have enough runners to qualify for a team score and even though they were already committed to the volleyball team they couldn’t say no.
“Ashley came and asked because she needed a team, so she asked me and I was like if you really need a team I’ll do it,” Bear Don’t Walk said. “I had wanted to do it, but I didn’t know if I could’ve handled it with volleyball.”
It didn’t take long for Bear Don’t Walk, Mitchell and Makepeace to question why they had agreed to take part in dual sports and their resolve was put to the test early. With volleyball and cross country practice starting under the summer heat of mid-August.
The girls would have to wake up early to get to the first two-hour volleyball practice and then after a short break they would have to go back for their second two-hour volleyball practice. But they weren’t finished for the day after four hours of volleyball. After another break the four would finish the day with a long run.
“We would just have time to ice our legs or take a nap and then we have to go back out,” Courville said.
“I slept,” Mitchell added, and the four started laughing.
The three-a-days lasted for two weeks until school started and on all 14 days the girls questioned why they were doing it.
“When we got up in the morning, that’s when I questioned it,” Bear Don’t Walk said, to the agreement of all three of her teammates. “But as we kept going to practice, it kept getting progressively better as our bodies adapted to getting up early.”
“Now, I get up early on the weekend, and I get mad,” Mitchell added.
Even with the three-a-days behind them, the girls were still tested, with many of their meets falling on the same day they had a volleyball match. All four agree the toughest of these days was the day they had to compete in the Mountain West Classic in Missoula and then be in Thompson Falls to take on the Lady Hawks.
The girls had to be at the school at 7 a.m. to catch the bus to the meet and then after running the hilly 3-mile course at the University of Montana Golf Course they were back on the bus to get back to school. Once back at school, they barely had a five-minute break before getting on another bus to Thompson Falls. With their legs still stiff and cramping from the long bus trip, the girls took care of the Lady Hawks in straight sets and were back on a bus again, not pulling into Mission until close to midnight.
“I was spacing out the whole game. I was just dead,” said Courville.
“I would agree with that because Mountain West was a tough course. My nose was all stuffed, and my throat was sore,” Bear Don’t Walk said.
“I dislocated my hip and still played the game,” Makepeace added.
As the four started to talk about the day and how they slept on the ride home, some of them snoring the whole time, they realized how long of a day it was.
“That was a long day, you guys,” Bear Don’t Walk told her teammates.
Though there were times that they questioned why they were competing in two sports and there were days where they were exhausted, they don’t regret doing it. Their only regret was not fielding a team at the Arlee meet because they didn’t think they could get back in time for a volleyball game. All four of the Lady Bulldog harriers are convinced, if they would’ve run in Arlee they could’ve won the Lady Bulldogs’ first cross country first-place trophy.
“I think about Arlee a lot,” Bear Don’t Walk said.
Bear Don’t Walk along with Courville and Makepeace will have another chance to get that trophy next year, all three said they will compete in both sports again next year. Mitchell the only senior in the bunch, wishes she could join them.
After all three of the juniors said they were going to do it again, a wishful Mitchell said, “I want to do it again.”
