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Having grown up among gangs and drugs of north Denver, Miguel
Cazares says he owes his life to a straight-talking, pony-tailed
veterinarian who has coached the cross country team at troubled North
High School since 1992. "I would never have thought I'd be running right now," said
Cazares, who graduated from North in 2005. "I could have been dropping
out of school like most of the kids at North. I could have been maybe
selling drugs like most of the kids that graduate from North and don't
have a life - be in prison, can't hold a job, stuff like that. "He really looks out for us. That's all he's been doing, saving good people's lives. He sees they have potential."
Oscar Ponce also credits North coach Jeff Young with helping him stay on the right path. As does Mauro Martinez.
They
don't even want to think about where they'd be if not for Young, a
former military brat and rugby player who grew up with an admittedly
naive middle-class world view that clashed with reality at North. Ponce ran for the University of Colorado after graduating
from North in 1995 and received a master's degree in education this
year from Boston University. He recently went to work as a parent and
family liaison for the Denver Public Schools, determined to
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"Running to me is like a religion. When I'm out there by myself, I feel
like it's God in me." Jeff Young, North High School cross country and
track coach (Post / Leah Bluntschli) |
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help others the way Young helped him.
When
Martinez was a freshman at North, he habitually ditched classes. He
never gave college a thought. Now a senior, he wants to run for a
college team and someday compete in the Olympics. Cazares, meanwhile, shocked observers at the Colfax Marathon
in May by finishing third in his first marathon at age 19 with a time
of 2 hours, 53 minutes, 44 seconds. He is attending the Community
College of Denver and hopes to run for a college team after resolving
eligibility issues. A 12-person team comprised of Young, Ponce, Cazares,
Martinez, other North grads and current North runners won last month's
Wild West Relay, a 195-mile race from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs
that attracted more than 90 teams. They all say Young and his posse of runners are like a
family. When Young attempted to run the Leadville Trail 100-mile race
two weeks ago (he dropped out with an injury at 50 miles) many were
there to support him. "Running to me is like a religion," said Young, who is 50.
"When I'm out there by myself, I feel like it's God in me. I work hard,
but I've been blessed, and I just feel like I need to share that. I
personally think everybody's obligated to it." Young is an idealist, but he's not a dreamer. When kids come
out for the team, he tells them running for him will be the hardest
thing they do in high school. He doesn't waste much time on them until
they prove they're tough enough to stick with it. "Poor families aren't ever going to move up if we give them a
poor education and if we don't demand from them," Young said. "I think
that's the biggest thing I bring to this team: I demand, and I don't
understand why you wouldn't." At first, coaching at North was a culture shock.
"I
was the first person who ever told them they should go to college and
really emphasized that," Young said. "I just thought everyone grew up
thinking that. I had that can-do attitude, but it was not because I was
gung-ho. I'm not a cheerleader kind of person - in fact, quite the
opposite. It was just a matter of practicality to me. It's just what
you do: You try your best, shoot for being the best, and you go to
college. You get a good education, you go out and work in the real
world. I thought that's the way everybody viewed the world. It took me
awhile to figure out that's not quite how everybody views the world." That's especially true at North, a school seemingly fighting for its very survival.
"There's poverty. There's single-parent families. There's kids
who are homeless," Ponce said. "Jeff set up a haven for us to come in
and try to do something with our lives. There's drugs; there's heavy
gang activity. "If it wasn't for running, I would have probably gone that way.
There's something about society that tells Latino males that this
(gangs and drugs) is what we do. We kind of buy into that, unless you
find a haven, something like the cross country team that Jeff was able
to create - and we all created." Keeping the faith
One former North
runner, Hector Moreno, got an engineering degree at CU. Julio Bonilla
is a freshman runner at the University of Miami. Esmeralda Martinez and
Samantha Towne are running for Mesa State. Cazares hopes he will be able to run for a college team, too.
When he began running for Young, he cared about school only insofar as
it kept him eligible for running. Young convinced him education needed
to be his top priority, then running. "There's so much stuff going on," Cazares said of North. "It
can ruin your life - not going to class, ditching, hanging out on 32nd.
When you graduate you'd be working at a McDonald's or Burger King,
stuff that you don't want for your kids. When I found the team, it was
a relief because I was actually good at running." Cazares wants to major in international business, travel
around the world, make big financial deals. He wants to come back to
North and help Young, the way Ponce has, and his stunning performance
in the Colfax Marathon suggests he might have the talent to compete
with the elites. "Faith is the hardest thing in the world, and if you believe
in something, you do it," said Cazares, who has a full-time job at the
Denver Museum of Nature and Science. "If you don't, then you're
mediocre and you don't do nothing in your life, just be a loser. I
don't want to be in that situation. I want my kids to have what I
didn't have. I want to give my kids a better life. Running changed my
life completely." A positive diversion
Martinez is
convinced he would have dropped out long ago if it hadn't been for
Young. Martinez felt the team relying on him, too, and didn't want to
let them down. "It kept my grades up because I wanted to stay in running,"
Martinez said. "It also kept me out of trouble from gangs or anything
that wasted the time of my day so I wouldn't do anything else bad. I
would just stay in running after school. "When I get home, I eat and go to sleep."
Young's extended family of runners is an alternative
to the gangs, providing another sense of belonging.
"A
gang provides that family, that unity," said Ponce. "We're our own
little gang. We're a positive gang that is about success and is about
looking forward and seeing how we can better ourselves. There are a lot
of barriers, but those can be overcome. It's just a matter of having
some people who want to do some work." Staff writer John Meyer can be reached at 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com.Para leer este artículo en español, vaya a denverpost.com/aldia | 
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