Graham is on the right track

All it takes is one conversation with St. Paul's Stuart Graham to learn that he loves competition.

At the 5A sectional championships, Graham avenged a loss to Spanish Fort's Brett Hanke at last week's McGill-Toolen Relays with a resounding win, running a course record 16 minutes, 10.71 seconds to help the Saints to a second-place finish.

"I didn't like the way things turned out last week, so I wanted to make something happen," said Graham. "I felt that I kind of gave up and I didn't want to let that happen again."

Graham got the better of Hanke at the Mobile Challenge of Champions and the Jesse Owens Cross Country Invitational. Last week, it was a different story, as Hanke ran 10:07 to win the 2-mile race in Flight 1, and Graham settled for second, running 10:23.

"He (Hanke) was a little bit stronger," Graham said. "But I like competition, and I'd rather get second to a good runner than finishing first all by myself."

Graham enjoys analyzing his races, and he didn't hesitate to explain what caused him to come up short at the McGill-Toolen Relays.

"We went out a little hard, and I hadn't run a two-mile race in quite some time," he said. "I got into a 5K (3.1 mile) groove, and I realized too late that Hanke was going to pull away. I didn't have enough to catch him."

That setback notwithstanding, St. Paul's coach Jim Tate said the best is yet to come for his star athlete. Tate compared Graham to former St. Paul's star John Brigham.

"He's getting better every week," Tate said. "We thought that early on, he was the guy that would challenge Brigham's school records (in several events). He seems to be on track for that."

Like most of the St. Paul's cross country athletes, Graham started running at a young age.

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