When it comes to distance running, ND's McClellan is hard to beat

If name and pedigree mean anything, Notre Dame cross county coach Bill Davis might have known a pretty good runner was coming his way when he met the McClellans at a road race at North County Park just over three years ago.

It was a Sunday and Dodd McClellan, a long distance track standout who graduated from Jackson High School in 1987 and went on to run on scholarship at Southwest Missouri State, was there with his wife, Karen, and their son. Karen also ran track and cross country at Southwest, which is where the pair met.

"We're standing there and here's the two McClellans, I didn't know them yet, and their son, and they're kind of looking at me kind of strange," Davis said.

"Finally they walked over and introduced themselves and said, 'We're thinking about sending our son to Notre Dame.' They talked to me and said, 'We want to know a little bit more about the program. We've been watching you and that, and we're kind of contemplating whether to send him to Jackson or whether to send him to Notre Dame.'"

For a coach who had just led the Notre Dame cross country team to its first state championship the previous season, the oldest of the McClellans' two boys might have appeared an ideal fit.

Notre Dame senior Wynn McClellan has won four of the eight races he's competed in this season. With McClellan leading the way, the Bulldogs will attempt to defend their Class 3 District 1 title Saturday in Farmington, Mo. (Kit Doyle)

His name?

Wynn.

At that point in time, Wynn was not doing any winning. He had run two years of track and a year of cross country in junior high, but he was far from a star. And he was not far removed from youth soccer, where he was more prone to standing than being a standout.

"[Wynn] met coach Davis, and he said, 'I want to go to Notre Dame,'" Dodd said. "He made the decision on his own to come to Notre Dame."

Wynn McClellan now is a slender 5-foot-9, 120-pound senior who is living up to his name and bloodlines.

"I'm glad they made the decision to send him here," Davis said. "It's a quality school. And I think Wynn has thrived here, not to say he wouldn't of thrived at Jackson, but I'm glad we got him.

"He's been a good kid and a quality athlete for us."

Wynn earned all-state distinction, just like both of his parents, when he finished ninth in the Class 3 meet as a junior, and he has hopes of becoming the first state champion in the household.

That notoriety also would span well beyond his Jackson home. While Notre Dame won the Class 2 team title in 2005, and finished third in Class 3 in 2006 and 2007 and second in 2008, it has not had an individual state champion.

The quest formally begins Saturday when Notre Dame participates in the Class 3 District 1 meet at Farmington. McClellan finished third in the meet last year as he helped Notre Dame break the district reign of Potosi, which had won the previous three state championships. Potosi seniors Jacob Swearingen, the eventual state champion, and Nick Niggeman finished ahead of McClellan.

"They're gone right now, the top guys," McClellan said. "There's some other guys that are good, but since they're gone, I feel more it's my time to get out there and shine."

In finishing ninth at state last year, McClellan was the second junior to cross the finish line, trailing only Harrisonville's Maksim Kovolev, who finished second overall.

"I never even saw him in the race, so he's definitely going to be the top guy," McClellan said. "I'm definitely going to try to stay with him and see what we can do. I just want to run with him at least. But yeah, if I run well, it's a possibility I could get a state championship."

Whether that scenario plays out remains to be seen, but he's already No. 1 in Davis' book.

"He's the best distance runner I've ever had," Davis said. "It's safe to say that."

Those words carry significant weight since Davis has been coaching cross country since 1995 and track since 1976. His cross country teams also have included a Class 1A-2A state champion squad at Kelly, and some standout individuals.

McClellan has four victories in eight meets this season.

He opened the season by placing first in the 11-team Murphysboro (Ill.) Invitational, took first in the 13-team Central Invitational, won the nine-team Notre Dame Invitational and most recently repeated as the SEMO Conference champion.

He has finished no worse than sixth, and his non-winning notables include a fourth-place finish at the Brooks Invitational last month in Memphis. That elite 43-team race featured 341 runners from seven states.

"Wynn's deal is he just likes to run fast," Dodd said. "He was real excited [at the Notre Dame Invitational] because that was the fastest he ever ran. He don't really care if he gets beat if he runs fast. He likes to run fast and faster than he has before. And that's the big thing about running: You explain to kids, you can get 100th, but if you ran faster than before, you can feel good about yourself."

Reaching the peak

When McClellan finishes at or near the front of the pack virtually every race, fans and coaches are witnessing the culmination of a steady progression of an athlete that has been dedicated to training and remarkably free of injury over his six-year career.

"He's gotten a lot better," Dodd said. "People don't realize that. When your best finish in junior high is 12th, and you're racing basically against local schools -- you don't ever race anybody probably past Farmington -- and you can do that, and then you can go down to Memphis and get fourth in the varsity race and go to Forest Park and get sixth in that race, that's just a lot of improvement. These kids that were winning the races back when he was in junior high are back in the 40s and 50s now. A lot of it is coach Davis and his program and doing stuff he asks you to do."

While Davis stresses summer training to his athletes, McClellan has stretched his workouts to the outer limits. He was running approximately 70 miles a week and ran seven days a week this past summer.

"It amazes what he does, how dedicated he is," said fellow senior Ryan Johnson, who has been the Bulldogs' No. 2 man in every race this season. It's incredible. He ran 800 miles this summer."

There was little doubt McClellan was not content to rest on his laurels of a breakout junior season, where he was the Bulldogs' top finisher in all but one race, won his first race at the SEMO Conference meet and rode the momentum to all-state.

"This summer, as the summer progressed, I realized, 'My gosh, he's really improved a lot as far as his ability to do a lot of work,'" Davis said. "And so once we knew his attitude toward doing more work was there, and his ability to do more work was there, then we knew the sky's the limit maybe on how fast he can go."

How low can you go?

Thus far, fast has meant lowering his school-record time for 3.1 miles to 15 minutes, 47.92 seconds. He did that at his final meet at Notre Dame, and it left his biggest fan and mentor a bit choked up.

"I started crying [at the meet]," Dodd said, "right in the middle of the race."

McClellan's father is not the typical parent of a cross country runner. Besides passing along some valuable endurance genes, the elder McClellan apparently has been a source of passion for the sport.

He'll watch his son's practices a couple of times a week at Notre Dame, keeps his son abreast of upcoming competitors and goes over strategy before a race.

"I didn't like it as much when I was a freshman," Wynn said. "I thought it was kind of weird, but I've grown to respect it more that my dad is out here supporting and pulling for me. He'll let me know when I had a good race or when I had a bad race or a good practice."

And while Dodd McClellan no longer runs, race days still are one of his sources of a good workout. He'll dart from point A to point B along the course as he gives his son feedback and encouragement.

"He's all over the course," Wynn said. "He doesn't run anymore, but he gets out there on these meets and he can fly. He's all over the place. He runs through brush and all kinds of stuff.

"Even at track meets, we'll go to track meets with fences around them, and sure enough, on a 2-miler, by the seventh lap he's in lane two. He's standing in lane two as I'm running in lane one, screaming. That's how close he gets. I don't know how he does it."

While Dodd intensely follows his son, Davis said he does not interfere with the coaching staff.

"He's not the kind of parent who gets in your face and says, 'I think you need to do this' or 'I think you need to do that,'" Davis said.

Davis realizes he's got a special runner on his hands, and he appreciates the input of Dodd in a sport where runners are spread over a course.

"I think him and Wynn kind of work out a race plan," Davis said. "Since he's a frontrunner, I basically say, 'Hey, you go and you do your thing.' And then my No. 2 man tries to rally the troops. We try to get our group off our No. 2 man this year.

"Now last year, we had my son [Logan], we had Wynn and we had the [Dillon] Klaffer boy. And a lot of times they all would run together, but that's not the case this year. Wynn has just gotten so much better. His pace has gotten so much better. He's just sort of separated himself from the rest of the unit."

Race strategy has become a bigger factor for McClellan. It's no longer run as hard as you can for as long as you can and see where you finish. He now will look for different runners to follow at different points of the race and is cognizant of times at various intervals. He has a good idea of who he wants to go after and when he should lay back with a more patient approach.

"He lets me decide how I want to run my races, but he throws his two cents in there and lets me know what he thinks I should do," Wynn said of his father. "And he's almost always right. ... I always try to listen to what my dad says, but if I don't execute well what my dad says, the race usually doesn't go very well. He's got it down, and he's been around. He's a big help. I appreciate it."

And Dodd is not just all about supporting his son on race day.

"You'll see him three or four times," Johnson said of the not-so-stationary Dodd. "He's always there yelling and cheers for you. He knows everybody on this team by name. It's a big help. A lot of times I don't hear other parents, but I always hear him. He's almost like a second coach, really. He knows what he's talking about."

But when Wynn runs a time that's fast, that's a meaningful occasion. The recent meet at Notre Dame was the culmination of many things.

"It was one of the better races he'd ran," Dodd said. "He ran real smart and he wasn't holding back. He finally ran like I thought he was capable of running. And he's been working on it for six years. He's run good before, but ..."

Wynn also was exuberant in the moment.

"I was so pumped after the 15:47," Wynn said. "I don't want to run in the 16s again. That's a pretty big goal, but it's something once you do it once or twice, you feel like that's where you need to be. I'd like to shave 10 more seconds off. I'd like to be down in the 15:30s. I want to finish off the season strong."

Dodd still holds the 1-mile and 2-mile records at Jackson. Wynn knows his father's best times in the events, as well his own. He knows off the top of his head that his own best of 4:34 in the mile is 16 seconds above his dad's 4:18. His 2-mile time of 9:31 is just 7 seconds off his dad's 9:24.

"In track, he hasn't quite run the times that I did in high school, but I think he will this year," Dodd said. "I want him to break every record. I still have the mile and 2-mile record at Jackson. Obviously he won't be breaking that school's record, but I want him to run faster than me, no doubt.

"I definitely want to get that mile down when it comes to track, but we're not there yet. We've still have got a ways to go in cross country."