In his first year coaching the Sedona Red Rock High School cross country team, coach Ben Scamihorn oversaw a girls team that qualified for state. The boys, meanwhile, narrowly missed qualifying. The boys relative success came despite two things.
The first was an overall lack of experience. The second was Shota Yabuuchi — perhaps the fastest distance runner at the school — not being on the team. The team is not only more experienced this year, but Yabuuchi decided to rejoin the Scorpions after a one-year hiatus.
Yabuuchi, now a junior, ran on the team as a freshman. He sat out as a sophomore, saying that he was burned out from running. But after having Scamihorn as a science teacher, he realized that he wanted to return to the trails.
“Mainly our coach,” Yabuuchi said, when asked why he came back. “In my freshman year we had Ms. [Whitney] Miley and she was a good coach. Then I took Mr. Scamihorn’s biology class and really liked him. I wanted to run under his coaching.”
Yabuuchi ran with Scamihorn throughout the Scorpions’ summer training program. On Aug. 21, he partook in a mile-long time trial with a number of his teammates. Yabuuchi ran that in 5:18. While he was easily the team’s fastest runner that day, it was well off of his normal personal record of 4:52.
“I still have a lot of work to do,” Yabuuchi said of getting back to his previous top speeds.
But while 5:18 was well off his personal best, the time trial was also a dramatic change from what the Scorpions had done throughout the summer. Normally, they were running more to build up endurance. The time trial was Yabuuchi’s first run for speed in a long time.
“It is different from running a long distance,” he said. “Just doing the mile at 100% was quite a different experience, I would say.”
From a team perspective, Yabuuchi hopes that the Scorpion boys will match what their female teammates did last fall and qualify for state. Since he didn’t run as a sophomore, Yabuuchi didn’t feel that he could accurately point out specific areas that need to be improved upon. That said, he does believe that the team is well positioned to reach state, stating that last year’s close call came without having an organized summer running program, as Scamihorn didn’t move to Arizona until shortly before the school year began.
Individually, Yabuuchi hopes to break his personal record over cross country’s standard 5K distance. He set that as a freshman, running in 18:37.
Yabuuchi expressed confidence in reaching that goal this season if he continues to put in the hard work at practices.
“I just put more hard work in — put extra work in every day,” he said. “And just doing what coach Scamihorn tells me to do. I think he will bring me to the next level.”
