Dan White is a hard worker, which is a good thing. But in the summer of 2016, he may have a worked a little too hard.
The Robbinsville High junior is the No. 1 runner for the Ravens boys’ cross country team after missing nearly the entire season due to injury. He spent most of last fall and winter track recovering in order to get ready for spring track.
“My freshman year went well, it was my first year running high school and then the summer before sophomore year, I trained too hard and ended up getting injured,” White said. “Once you’re injured you can’t do anything about it. I was just stuck until spring of that year.”
The injury was somewhat confusing, according to the runner. It started out as what he thought was a stress fracture and he was “waiting for it to heal, but apparently it was muscle pulls because of weak hips.”
Thus, White had to make his way back slowly. His first mile in spring track was 5:15 and by the end of the season he brought it down to 4:48. During a mile time trial in mid-summer, he hit a personal best of 4:45.
“For him, that was the moment of ‘Oh my gosh,’” first-year cross country coach Anthony Dentino said. “He really had a great summer of training.”
White was happy to actually see his work making a difference.
“That was really awesome,” he said of the 4:45. “It just kind of showed all the pain put forth in the summer was paying off already, and got me excited for the season.”
White got into running distances after hearing that his dad, Mike, and his uncles used to run marathons. He went out for the Pond Road cross country team in sixth grade and was not one of the top runners.
“But I started to put in the work,” he said. “In seventh grade I was fourth guy, kind of fighting for third, and in eighth grade year I was first on the team. I thought running was fun. I like to run, I guess it gets the stress out. Running with people is fun, more than running on your own. It makes things interesting.”
As a freshman, White was happy with his effort and times, but was only used as an alternate in the post-season races as other runners had more experience.
“That was a little disappointing, but I understood because I was a freshman,” he said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
White was poised for a breakthrough year as a sophomore until the injury hit. He sat idle until midway through winter track, when he was able to do stretches and start physical therapy. The coach noted that White is taking no chances now, when it comes to his physical well-being.
“He’s great about doing things,” Dentino said. “He’ll tell me ‘Coach I’m doing some extra stretches and things for my hip.’ He’s really pro-active and really wants to stay healthy. You can trust him to do all the extra stuff on his own, which is really valuable for me.”
Dan White is a hard-nosed runner who grinds things out—he has a good knowledge of how to race, which he combines with toughness.
White has gotten off to a strong start this year. In the Cherokee Invitational, which was run on a two-mile course, he ran a 10:28 and finished 21st in the Junior race. On Sep. 16, he came up big with a fifth-place finish in Division 1, 2, 3 (the top division) at the South Jersey Shootout in Glassboro.
White was in 17th place at the one-mile mark and picked off 12 guys en route to a PR of 16:35. He started to make his move when assistant coach Brian Harshman yelled out “Orange guy!”, which was his way of telling White to stick with the orange jersey of Cherokee’s Jonathan Conn. The Ravens were battling to try and score lower than the Chiefs.
“I stuck with him and eventually I beat him and I just continued to pass more guys,” White said. “I didn’t think I was passing a lot of people but because I was focusing on the Cherokee guy, I ended up passing people during that time but I just didn’t notice.”
The race was typical of how White pays attention to instruction.
“Normally, Dan is the kind of kid who likes to sit back, which is how we teach them to race,” Dentino said. “We want them to be out in a good spot but we don’t want them to be out over our heads. And then we start to move and pick some people off in the last part of the race. And that’s what he does. He listens and he’s very easy to coach and to talk to and give direction and instruction. He takes that and puts it into his own race plan and executes every time. I was really impressed with what he did at the Shootout. That’s a sign of maturity and a really smart racer.”
The coach laughed when asked if White was a fluid runner, saying “I don’t know if I’d use the word fluid, but he’s definitely tough.”
White is more of a hard-nosed runner who just goes to work and grinds things out. He has a good knowledge of how to race, which he combines with that toughness.
His goals for the team this year are to win the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II championship meet, and to get through the state meet into the Meet of Champions. His individual goal is to maintain the PR he set in Glassboro on tougher courses such as Holmdel and Thompson Park, where the county and state meets are held.
“I just want to do my best as far as getting us to our team goals,” White said.
However the season works out, Dan is just happy to be running again.
“It’s great,” he said. “I got to do the whole summer training last year but very few races, so it’s nice to see the actual physical times from all the hard work this year.”
Dentino feels that teams – and teammates – are now starting to see the real Dan White.
“He’s a really talented kid who never got the chance to show it because of the injuries,” the coach said. “Now he’s been consistently healthy for a long period of time. It’s very cool to watch that and it’s very cool to watch him start to realize just how good he can actually be. Come November, you need a good frontrunner like Dan. We know he will be a big part of any success we have.”
Robbinsville cross country runner Dan White (second from left) recovered from an injury to come back stronger than ever for the Ravens. He’s pictured with teammates Kelley Fernandes, Kayli Heverin and Gil Carr.,
