By Arionna Segraves
“I’m buying you a tennis racket and some shoes. You have practice today.”
Cameron Deckman read his mom’s text, but he knew he didn’t want to go to practice. He thought about what he could do that was something other than tennis, then he got it. Cross country was the pick.
Cam, who was getting ready for his freshman year, had to pick a fall sport to do because he got in trouble and could not be trusted at home.
He only planned to do it until the punishment was over. As the first cross country season wrapped up, he decided to give it another go.
“So that first year, I didn’t think I was going to do it another year because I was like, ‘OK, I’ll be grounded for a little while, then I’ll be done, I won’t have to do it again,’” he said. “So I wasn’t going to do it another year until the end of the season when I started (getting personal record times), and I was like, ‘Wow, this is cool!’”
Cam’s freshman season he was racing for a spot on varsity to run at sectionals with two teammates. He said that one of the guys got sick and couldn’t go to the practice, and he said the other one didn’t show up by choice.
“So I got varsity and then I ran at sectional and I was supposed to be our seventh guy, but I dropped a ton of time. I went from like 21:30 to 20:40 and was our fifth runner,” Cam said.
So instead of a one-and-done punishment sport, he realized that he might have a shot at getting varsity and staying there. He started to take it more seriously.
Cam started to get better and drop times. He grew to love it and was determined to keep getting better.
Cam, now a senior, has grown as a person and an athlete since then.
“I mean, he’s dropped like six minutes from his 5K from freshman to senior year, which is pretty well unheard of,” senior Noah Parrott said.
Cam said he has benefitted from being on the cross country team.
“It’s definitely made me really humble and it’s also introduced me to a lot of people that have seriously impacted my life in a good way, better than what it would have been if I didn’t get grounded.” Cam said,
Cross country hasn’t just helped Cam improve his character, but it has helped him become stronger in his journey with Christ and gain a brand new friend group.
Noah has helped him continue that journey by inviting him to church activities. Cam said that boosted his hunger to know Jesus and run for “His glory, not mine.”
Cam and Noah have been through the full four years together and have taught each other things.
“As a person, he’s improved a lot, definitely from where he started,” Noah said. “He wasn’t obviously like an awful person or anything, but he’s just become a lot more mature and just makes a lot better decisions than he used to, which is much better.”
Junior Carter Friend agreed that Cam has changed for the better.
“Definitely like the group of friends he had at the time and like how he was able to change so much over such a short period of time,” Carter said.
Noah says that Cam has helped him in so many ways by showing up to off-season practices with him. He also says that Cam is a great leader and leads by example for the team, especially for younger teammates.
Carter said Cam has helped him to stay motivated to keep running.
“I definitely wouldn’t be the same runner right now as I am if Cam wasn’t on the team. “ Carter said.
Another person who loves to see Cameron improve and succeed is cross country and track coach Mackenzie Dye Conley.
“Well, if you had told me Cameron’s freshman year that he was going to be a varsity athlete running in the mid-17s, I probably would have laughed at you because he was a goofy little kid that was doing cross country because he got in trouble.” Dye said. “And he has definitely bought into the program that we do, and he has worked really, really hard after figuring out, ‘Oh my gosh, I actually kind of like cross-country.’“
Dye says that Cam is a goofball at times but “he often uses humor and his personality to make new athletes feel welcome and to show them that team culture is really important and that everybody is respected in the group.”
Cam’s motivation is to just be a better runner overall. For track, his motivation is junior Nolan Hutchison being a second behind him in the 800 and trying to stay in front of Nolan. They both just push each other to be better.
But for cross his main motivation is that he just wants to improve and be better because he loves what he is doing.
“I just really love the sport. I just love it,“ Cam said.
Cam’s mindset before each race is to just stay focused on the race in front of him and do the best he could. His mindset after each race is that he can only stay mad or upset 24 hours after the race and then he moves on to the next one and focuses.
However Cam’s mindset for this year specifically was to go out there and have the best last season he could have.
Unfortunately he says that he didn’t have the most exciting senior season, but that just makes him more determined to have a good senior track season.
Cam and his teammates have said that the cross country team is super close and that it basically feels like a family, moreso his junior and senior year of high school.
They all have each other’s backs through the highs and lows. Noah and Cam help lead new athletes by example and help them be comfortable with the sport and the team.
He plans to run in college and there are a couple schools he has been talking to such as Franklin College and Manchester University. He hopes that some others will have more interest in him after the indoor track season.
So as the sport Cam has poured his blood, sweat and tears into comes to an end, it opens a brand new opportunity for something bigger.
“So I feel like it’s really shaped who I am today,” Cam said.
