Central High School junior Ethan Duer has been shaving minutes off of his distance times—and pounds off of his frame—since he started running as a 12-year-old, inspired by his mother, who ran for South Brunswick as a high school student.
The boys’ cross country squad captain first started running as a way to lose weight, and it worked—he shed over 40 pounds throughout the spring and summer of his seventh grade year. Instead of stopping when he met his goal, though, he continued running into eighth grade and then, eventually, in high school.
“When it came time to go to high school, I thought, ‘I really enjoy running. Why don’t I turn it into something?’” he said. “I joined the cross country program, then I did winter track, and then I did spring track. Here we are, two years later. It’s just been awesome.”
He chose running over lifting weights or playing other sports because of his mom’s history on the trails. She still does some jogging and speed walking today, he said.
“I was kind of drawn to it just from her,” he said. “She influenced me to start. I thank her a lot for it. As soon as I started, the pounds kept coming off, and it became something I liked.”
Now, Duer is the Bulldogs’ team captain, and after starting off his high school career with times in the 21-minute region, he’s running a 17:32 race with a sub-17 time in his sights for next season, said head coach John Zalot.
“Going into counties and sectionals, I knew that if I wanted to run well for the team, I needed to be in that 17:30-17:40 range,” Duer said.
He ran an 18:11 time in the Mercer County meet on Oct. 24, about 40 seconds slower than his goal, but still enough to give Hopewell an eighth-place finish and sectional berth. The Bulldogs’ season ended on Nov. 8 after another eighth-place finish in the Central Jersey Group III sectional meet, where Duer had the best finish for the squad, coming in at 27th, with a 17:42 time.
Zalot said the sectional meet’s sub-18 time is a far cry from what Duer ran just two years ago.
“The change has been pretty dramatic,” Zalot said. “When he first came here as a freshman, his times weren’t great. Now, he’s running 17s, and he’s close to breaking that 17-minute barrier. It was a nice shock to see what he ended last season with to what he ended this season with.”
Zalot named Duer captain this year after seeing both the change in his pace and his support of the team.
“You see his enthusiasm for the program and for the team,” Zalot said. “I wanted that to parlay into enthusiasm from the whole team.”
While Duer was enthusiastic as an underclassman, he was quiet, though Zalot said he never hesitated to help the coaching staff or inquire about upcoming races.
This year, he was nothing like the shy, unassuming sophomore from 2013.
“When I made him captain, he was very vocal,” Zalot said. “He was always like, ‘Come on guys, we have to work. Let’s think about what our goals are.’ I would hear him saying that during workouts, during warmups for a race. Not only does he have it in himself, he also vocalizes it to get the team to be on the same page as well.”
And his constantly-decreasing times have inspired some of the other guys, too.
“It has been a good experience for him, being a leader,” Zalot said. “People see him working so hard and making improvements. They say, ‘Wait a minute, if Ethan’s improving by a minute, then maybe I should be improving my a minute, too.’”
Now that the season is over, Duer is already focusing on his winter and spring track goals. He plans to focus on the mile, since the two-mile is a rare even during the winter season. Once the spring season gets going, he hopes to nail down a sub-10 minute two-mile time. He currently sits at 10:22.
While he sticks to distance events in the other sports, cross country is still his favorite of the three because of his stamina. He calls himself “not really a speed kind of guy.”
“I just was never really a good sprinter,” he said. “I don’t know if I adopted that from becoming a distance runner when I first started, but I’ve just always been drawn to distance more. I always enjoy the cross country season. It starts at the beginning of July, so it’s one of the longest.”
Duer is fully dedicated from July to November, regardless of how he’s feeling on any given day and that, said Zalot, is why he was the perfect captain.
“You have some insight into everything that’s going on with the team, which is nice,” Duer said. “It’s a good feeling to know that you’re kind of the spokesperson of the team. And I’m an only child, but every day coming to practice, it’s like I’m with my brothers. That’s an awesome aspect that I always enjoy about being on any team.”
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