DESTREHAN, LA – Ashari Crisostomo is a Junior on the Destrehan High School Cross Country team. He loves the sport, and not just for the competitive spirit. He feels it’s “therapeutic” to run, and can help someone get things off of their mind, but familial circumstances obligated him to leave early in the season.

As Coach Brian Maurice describes it, “He was with us in the beginning but his grandfather passed away, so he was in the Philippines for nearly three weeks.”
Ashari spoke on the experience: “I got meet a lot of my family I haven’t seen. I left when I was ten, so that’s been seven years since I haven’t seen like my other side of my family so, it was pretty good.”

Ashari loved the trip and being able to see and have fun with all of his family. He describes numerous events, including his family’s visit to Tagaytay City to see the smallest volcano in the world, his cousins being together at the falls, and the whole family getting together to take a picture.

This trip, however, did have a temporary effect on his athletic performance.

As his teammate Ryan Munster said, “Practice is vital to be a committed part of this team because if you slack off for even like two days then just your ability to compete on a realistic level is just horribly messed up.”

Coach Maurice describes how Ashari was behind at first: “So he was a little behind on his training so he’s not quite where he was last year, but he’s made up ground pretty quickly and he’s moving from the middle of the pack to one of our top runners now. But uh, you know things happen like that and it’s part of the experience – challenges of the season – you never know what might come your way, but I think he’s overcome it pretty well.”

Ashari, however, felt that he didn’t fall behind too much. “I mean like, I ran while I was there, and I felt like my body had time to rest, so when I came back I actually took off like, I think three minutes of my time. I don’t know the science to it but I think – I don’t really think it put me at that much of a disadvantage.”

As of the 2017 LHSAA Region 3 competition, he set a personal record on the three mile run of 21 minutes and 35.2 seconds, knocking a whole minute off of his seasonal record last year. And he’ll only continue to improve athletically as he joins the Frisbee Team in spring, continues to run on his own time, and rejoins his Cross Country team next fall.

Update: This story received a First Place Sports Story award during the Journalism Education Association conference at Loyola University.