The book on Bill Aris: ‘Amazing Racers’ examines F-M’s run of cross country greatness – syracuse.com

Syracuse, N.Y. — Bill Aris was never going to be your typical running coach.

“I decided early on that I was going to coach in a different way,” he said. “Partly because it’s my nature and partly because I knew a lot about what I didn’t like in being coached as a kid. I vowed I was not going to do things a certain way.”

Aris kept that pledge.

As his career as a running coach at Fayetteville-Manlius High School unfolded starting in the 1990s, Aris has shaped a style and philosophy that would produce an unrivaled cross country dynasty in Central New York — a program that would become feared, hated, targeted and copied — in state, regional and national competitions.

Aris’ boys and girls teams have won 19 state championships over the past 15 seasons and finished second six more times. The F-M girls won 12 state titles in a row starting in 2006 before Saratoga Springs ended the run last fall. The boys team has won seven state crowns and finished second five times. None of those teams has finished worse than fourth.

At the Nike Cross Nationals — an invitation-only cross country team competition started in 2004 by the famous sportswear company — the F-M programs are legendary.

The girls have won the championship in 11 of 13 visits since in 2006, a dominance of the country’s best programs that resembles the hold on women’s college basketball that Geno Auriemma’s Connecticut teams have enjoyed. The F-M boys also have earned 13 invites to the NXN event, taking eight top-fives including a championship in 2014, three runner-up finishes, a third, two fourths and a fifth place.

In the 2014 event, F-M swept both the girls and boys titles.

After that unprecedented feat, Aris decided to write, with longtime track and field journalist Marc Bloom (Runner’s World), a book that would tell the story of the program, highlighting an 11-year period starting in 2004.

“Amazing Runners: The Story of America’s Greatest Running Team and its Revolutionary Coach” hits bookstores Aug. 6.

It tells the story of a bold gambit by Aris in the early 2000s to convince teenagers at F-M to become more than just members of a cross country team, embracing proper nutrition and rest, following a strict, demanding training regimen, and devoting themselves to teammates in a way that largely runs counter to what occurs in today’s look-at-me age in American sports.

Aris insisted the book not be a coaching manual, nor did he want to produce what he calls a “jock book.”

“I want this to be an accurate history of that great decade,” he said. “In it will be laced certain things about our program: philosophies of coaching or training.”

Aris admits that he was initially conflicted about doing a book that centers so much on himself. That’s because a major component of his “Stotan” running philosophy comprises a deep humility and a commitment to training and sacrifice for the good of the team.

“My very humble outlook is that the idea of a book seems somewhat inflated in one respect, in that this is kids running, it’s not finding a cure for cancer or landing on the moon,” he said.

And he wasn’t looking for more attention.

“I’m not a very flamboyant person,” said Aris, who was decked out in shorts, T-shirt and a baseball hat with a logo of his beloved New York Yankees during a recent interview at Panera Bread in Fayetteville. “I’m very matter-of-fact, bare bones, objective, black and white. I’m the kind of guy who prefers a good documentary to a Hollywood-type movie. I would rather have accuracy.”

After losing his job at Carrier Corp. in the early 1990s, part of a national trend of slashing middle-and upper-level management positions in the wake of an economic downturn, Aris let his wife, Chris, a neonatal nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital, become the family’s breadwinner.

He became “Mister Mom,” as he calls it, and volunteered to help out with F-M’s running programs since his son, John, and daughter, Andrea, were interested in the sport.

An avid marathon runner, Aris eventually became a paid assistant coach and also a teaching assistant at F-M. He took over as the girls track and field and cross country coach in 1998 and took over both the girls and boys programs in 2004.

Borrowing much from the work of mid-20th century distance coach Percy Cerutty of Australia, Aris sold his runners — first the boys and later the girls — on a running philosophy known as “Stotan,” a blend of the terms stoic and spartan.

The resulting buy-in from the runners, and their parents, helped produce a continuing era of dominance at the local, state and national levels.

On one hand, it’s not rocket science.

Aris’ runners shun social media (for the most part), eat right, get plenty of rest and log a ton of miles in training.

But that’s not the critical part of the formula, he said.

“While I appreciate the X’s and O’s nature of any sport, I find it the most boring part of what I do,” said Aris, a native of Floral Park on Long Island who played most of the stick-and-ball sports growing up. “Certainly physical training is a big part of being successful in anything, but that’s the easiest part, as far as I’m concerned. The biggest part — 80 percent of the 100 percent of what I do as a coach — is all about what is between the ears and in the heart.”

During the summer of 2004, Aris and his son, John, took members of the varsity boys cross country team to a week-long camp in the Adirondacks. While feeding the runners a wholesome diet of fresh food, along with lectures on his Stotan philosophy, the boys participated in often grueling workouts through the wooded hills and trained harder than they ever had.

The fruit of their labors began to ripen during that fall season, particularly when the Hornets shocked the cross country world at the prestigious Manhattan Invitational by winning and crushing perennial boys powerhouse Christian Brothers Academy of New Jersey, the odds-on favorite. The boys team went on to win the state championship and finish second in their first trip to the Nike Cross Nationals, a new event that brought the top boys and girls teams together in Portland, Ore., to determine a national champion.

Two years later, the girls team, which also had been bought into the Stotan fold, began its stunning run of success.

“Kids just wanted to be part of it,” said John Aris, who coached with his father until career and family obligations forced him to step away in 2010. “It was fun to see distance running — cross country and track and field — become the cool thing, when it’s not traditionally seen that way.”

Molly Malone ran on F-M girls cross country teams that won Nike Nationals three straight years from 2006-09. She said the combination of Aris’ motivational speeches, which could run long, and the tremendously difficult workouts — alongside the boys — pushed the girls to the next level.

“Looking back now I’m like, ‘Wow, we would have done literally anything for our team.’ It was crazy,” said Malone, who went on to run at Syracuse University and earn a master’s in fine arts from Boston University.

Malone, one of the former Hornets most often quoted in “Amazing Runners,” currently works for Tracksmith, a high-end sportswear company in Boston.

“That’s what you need as a high schooler: To be dedicated to something bigger than yourself,” she said. “I’ve learned so much just from being a part of that team — running aside — mostly about teamwork and selflessness more than anything.”

Through the years, Aris has always found ways to convince young runners — many of them refugees from team sports such as baseball, soccer, football or basketball — to sacrifice for one another.

“When I first started running I was a fit kid, but I hadn’t been really active. It was really, really difficult for me to do the first couple of months,” said Kyle Barber, a former baseball player who was member of the boys 2014 national championship team.

Barber, a recent UConn graduate who Aris calls one of the best all-around athletes he ever coached, remembered how the first Stotans, the 2004 boys team, were regarded as legendary. So when the 2014 team became the first boys team to win at nationals, it felt surreal.

“It was unbelievable, in a way, that we had completed something that nobody else had ever done,” he said. “We beat the legends. It wasn’t about beating the legends. It was about continuing what they started. But it also was about, wow, look where we are now.”

The book details the pain and sacrifice of many runners who had to overcome injuries or other obstacles on their way to inspiring performances.

Aris got his teams to bond so closely that their differences were left at the starting line. They ran as one – vital in a sport where team success is as much about the time the fifth-fastest runner turns in as those of the four who finish ahead. And that unity must be spread to the non-scoring sixth and seventh runners, as well, who have to be dependable in a three-mile race where the unexpected might suddenly put them in scoring position.

While the hardware piled up year after year, and continues to do so, Aris said the program’s true success is in the habits, discipline and confidence it instills in the runners.

“It is a lot of hard work,” he said. “For the kids, the parents and the coaches. It’s a lot of work. We have certain values in place for every aspect of our program, regardless of how successful we are. The winning part is a by-product of all the other parts of the work. Our process is what we focus on.”

Thus the often-repeated Hornet running mantra: The process is the goal.

Perfect the training and the winning follows.

Aris, a voracious reader and student of history and philosophy, knows he has his detractors.

Rumors have always abounded – that the Stotans are a cult, that he starves his runners, drives them too hard or intimidates them into success.

“Some people correctly would call me a screamer if they saw me in some of my rare moments,” he said. “I don’t scream as much as I used to. Some would see me as very factual, and truthful. Some people don’t like hearing the truth.”

The claim that his runners don’t eat right galls him most of all, since one of the basic Stotan tenants is good nutrition.

Aris acknowledges that his directness with parents, runners, school administrators and other coaches doesn’t always endear him.

“I’m not big on PC (political correctness),” he said. “I don’t make that my priority. If your goal is to be liked, you’re probably never going to gain respect.”

“There are people who can’t stand me,” he continues. “And there are people who really like me and appreciate me – the ones that know me – and there’s all kinds of others in between.”

One of his peers, Chittenango coach Harold Mueller, pierces some of the F-M mystique by saying, “Yeah. They work hard. They work harder than everyone else.”

Mueller said a coach like Aris is good for area running.

“I think he’s raised the level of distance running in Central New York,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to keep up. I think he’s forced everyone else to be a little more attentive to their training.”

Do the rumors and back-biting bother Aris?

“Early on it did. But I’ve developed a thicker skin,” he said. “The rumors and the gossip are just that. And I’ve given up trying to convince people otherwise. It’s not like we don’t have our naysayers – even in the district. But if I start selling out to appease the masses of people who gossip about us, then I’ve already lost.”

Scott Sugar took over as athletics director at F-M seven years ago, right in the middle of the Hornets’ run of cross country greatness.

“I was very happy to be able to inherit that,” he said. “It’s been very rewarding just to get to know Bill.”

Sugar said he’s heard all of the rumors. He wonders what is so bad about the lessons he sees the students receiving – such as having high expectations, doing hard work, and everyone pulling together to reach a common goal.

Aris’ program is ruled by performance and results, but he said he has never cut a runner from his teams.

“The notion that every kid has to play is kind of misleading,” he said. “There’s a place for every single kid that wants to join our cross country or track teams. That doesn’t mean that every kid is going to compete. Most kids in our program compete at one time or another, but I do not believe that everyone gets a medal and everyone gets a trophy. I just don’t run it that way.”

Aris is also finding new purpose through his grandchildren. He has four with a fifth due next month.

“It’s a whole new dimension of life, and I thoroughly enjoy that,” he said.

A regular attender at Immaculate Conception Church in Fayetteville, Aris lists his priorities in life as – love of God; love of family; being respectful to all; taking care of his health; and devoting himself to coaching.

He gave up his teaching assistant job at F-M in 2010 but has no plans to leave coaching.

“I take it one year at a time,” he said. “I still enjoy it. If I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t do it.”

Chris Aris says her husband is one of the lucky few to have found and followed his true passion.

“He just had this dream, with the Stotans,” she said. “And he had the right parents, and the right mix and the right kids. And it was like a flower that opened. It was a dream. It just unfolded.”