Two sports involve runs. In baseball you score them; in cross country you endure them.
Ross Baumer used to like scoring runs, and driving them in, when he played baseball for Festus High and the Festus Post 253 American Legion club. He actually played his way into the starting lineup for both teams this past spring and summer.
Then he discovered the sport he really was meant for – cross country.
It all started with a broken wrist suffered when he slid into first base in the last game of his high school career, a 17-4 loss to Oakville. An outfielder and pitcher, Baumer graduated in May but had trouble getting his arm strength back this summer after the wrist healed. So he played sparingly for the Festus Legion team until mid-season. Then something happened.
“I came in one game and got a hit,” Baumer, 17, recalled. “Every time I‘d come into a game I got a hit, and I kept getting hits. So eventually I got in the starting lineup.”
By the time Post 253 started playing in the District 13 tournament in mid-July, Baumer was a fixture in left field and showed good range chasing down fly balls. In a 12-8 comeback victory over Farmington, he had three hits, a walk and two runs batted in. He wound up hitting over .400 in 10 games played.
But with his throwing arm still not up to par, he started thinking beyond baseball for his senior year. Cameron Beck, Baumer’s baseball teammate in both high school and Legion ball, told him he should try out for cross country.
“My friends wanted me to do it; they knew I could run,” Baumer said. “I was always running at baseball practice. We had to run laps and I ran my hardest.”
So there he was when Festus head coach Bryant Wright welcomed his harriers for the start of preseason practice Aug. 1. Baumer had never run competitively in his life, and he was surrounded by seasoned athletes coming off two consecutive state championships.
“The first three weeks, it was tough,” Baumer said, adding that he ran as much as 65 miles per week in training. “But I got used to it and adapted to the workouts. It wasn’t hard any more after the first month.”
Getting in competitive condition was one thing; learning how to race was another. He realized that in his first meet, the Fleet Feet Kickoff in late August.
“It was only a two-mile (course) and I took off real fast,” he recalled. “I was in second place through about 1.2 miles. Then I remember getting passed by so many people; I died at the end. After the race Noah (Hunter) told me I needed to pace myself and not go all-out at the beginning. So I kind of latched onto Noah and soaked up what he said.”
He worked his way into the Tigers’ senior-heavy top group, usually finishing from No. 5 man to No. 7. He finished 10th at the JCAA meet on Oct. 15, with six teammates ahead of him.
In early September, Baumer experienced his defining moment when he won the junior varsity race at the prestigious Memphis Twilight meet, clocking 17:12. The time didn’t matter so much as the fact that he, the novice runner, conquered the field.
“It was a great feeling,” he said. “That’s probably when I thought I could actually be really good. In the varsity race, which had a faster pace, I probably could have run faster.”
A month later he did run faster, much faster, at the Chile Pepper Festival in Fayetteville, Ark., placing 81st in 16:32.34, a personal-best by 42 seconds. At most schools, that would make him the top runner. Wright started including Baumer in the Tigers’ top group in workouts.
“(At first) he was just happy that there was another runner who works hard at practice,” Baumer said of how Wright handled his new protege. “He thought I had a lot of potential, as we practiced more and more. (Then) he called me over and said he thought I could get all-state because I work so hard. That’s what guided me toward running better, that he said I could be all-state. It just clicked in my head.”
He fell just short of all-state honors at the state meet Nov. 5 in Jefferson City, finishing 27th in 16:44.85 as the Tigers’ sixth man. The top 25 are all-state. Any disappointment he felt was more than compensated for by the team’s third straight Class 3 championship.
“Our goal the whole season was to win the state championship,” he said. “We just worked hard every single day and accomplished it. It was a good feeling.”
He’s still learning how to race. Wright took the team to the Nike Midwest Nationals at Terre Haute Nov. 13 and Baumer placed 231st in a field of 316, clocking just over 17 minutes.
“I didn’t pace myself that day,” he said. “I went real fast the first mile, like 4:50. I could have been around 16:30 or 16:40 if I had paced myself.
“It was like a pack of bulls, there were so many people. You don’t realize how fast you’re going because there are so many people.”
This spring he’ll be on the track, not the baseball diamond. He’s a runner now and looking back would just slow him down. When he ran his PR in Arkansas, he caught the eye of Marc Bierbaum, the head coach at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph. Bierbaum is starting cross country and track programs at the school and has signed Baumer to compete for the Griffons.
“I don’t miss it,” Baumer said about playing baseball. While Festus head coach Jeff Montgomery guides the Tigers on the diamond this spring, his former outfielder and relief pitcher will be aiming for a sub-two-minute time in the 800 meters and 4:35 or better in the 1,600.
Will Montgomery try to get Baumer to play ball one more time?
“He’ll probably say something.”