NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Bryan Green
will race at the West Regionals this weekend with an NCAA
Championship berth on the line.
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
A year ago, UCLA cross country runner Bryan Green finished 35th
at the West Regional meet in Fresno. He felt good about the run and
how his season had ended, but scrolling up the results, he noticed
a runner from UC Irvine was 25th and qualified for the NCAA
Championships.
“There was no reason I couldn’t be at
nationals,” Green said. “Physically, I was just as good
as he was. But mentally I wasn’t ready. It left me
hungry.”
In track in the spring, however, Green injured himself and
didn’t come close to the goals he had set for himself.
Now, as a fourth-year junior, Green heads into this
Saturday’s Regional meet running better than even he
expected. The eighth-place finisher at the Pac-10 Championships two
weeks ago, Green is in a good position to qualify for the NCAA
finals as an individual.
“Coming in, I knew I would have a good season,”
Green said. “I just wasn’t expecting the level to be
this high.”
When asked of Green’s breakthrough, his coach and
teammates first point to his health.
“A couple of years ago, he had a really good track
season,” said UCLA team captain Scott Abbott. “We knew
that if he could train at a high level consistently, he could do a
lot.”
“On the unfortunate side, he’s been
injury-prone,” Bruin head coach Eric Peterson added.
“It’s not uncommon for a young distance runner to get
banged up.”
“Bryan’s become very diligent about doing the
necessary things to keep himself healthy.”
Green, though, says much of his breakthrough has to do with the
change in perspective he gained over the summer.
Before going to vacation in Europe, Green went to Utah for his
sister Jessie’s wedding. There, he met his
brother-in-law’s 8-year-old nephew, J.C.
J.C., who has cerebral palsy, can think like a normal child but
cannot speak. He has no control of his muscles and wears braces on
his legs.
But, according to Green, J.C. is a completely happy kid.
“He does what he can do and he enjoys it,” Green
said. “If he could be doing sit-ups, I’m sure
he’d be doing them left and right.”
Playing with J.C. everyday, Green realized his problems were
relatively trivial. J.C. couldn’t communicate with others or
feed himself, while Green’s problem was that he would have to
find time to run while traveling in Europe.
“If that’s my problem, that’s just
laziness,” Green said.
So as he and teammate Martin Brix made their way around Europe
in the weeks that followed, Green had no trouble getting out of bed
each morning.
Less worried about matters in life in general, Green became
increasingly self-assured and gained the confidence to commit
himself to running.
“Before, I thought if I didn’t run well, it would be
a reflection of me,” Green said. “I think a lot of
times, people are afraid to do the work, because if they do and
fail, they can’t handle it.
“Now, I figure that if it doesn’t pan out, it
doesn’t pan out. I accept it if I fail,” he said.
“I’d rather run and see what I could be.”
Green returned to the States in good shape and ran well at the
team’s camp in Mammoth.
Once the season started, Green didn’t slow down. He has
been UCLA’s No. 1 runner in every race this year, having
placed in the top 10 in every race.
And he did so while sticking to the team’s race plan,
which calls for all the Bruins to stay together for the first three
miles of the 8,000-meter contests.
“Bryan is very coachable,” Peterson said.
“He’s very open to every suggestion.”
Consequently, none of his teammates resent that he may go to the
national finals alone.
“He’s always putting the team first,” Abbott
said. “He’s operating from within our group and
that’s unique for an athlete of his level.
“We feel like he’s one of us. If he makes it,
we’ll all be very proud.”
When Green first began running, he wasn’t very patient. A
baseball and soccer player throughout most of his childhood, Green
didn’t begin running until his sophomore year at Littlerock
High School in Palmdale.
He liked to go out hard and hang with the leaders as long as he
could. Still, Green made a pair of trips to the cross country state
championships during high school and was a Southern Section
finalist in the 1600m in track as a senior.
In his freshman year at UCLA, Green redshirted both cross
country and track.
It was not until two years ago that Green became a mainstay on
the Bruin team. And he steadily improved from there, overcoming the
occasional injury.
Green feels like he is almost a different person than he was in
those days. Especially after the Pac-10 Championships, where he
came in a surprising eighth, Green said his self-image changed.
“I used to always think the guys that were up there were
just so much more talented than me,” he said. “Now, I
was wondering why my goal was to be 15th.”