High school cross country: Avon Lake's Matt Henry fights through injury, doubt to make first state meet

Qualifying to state in cross country is never easy. For Avon Lake senior Matt Henry, it was downright hard. Henry had to battled through some tough times this year to make it to Saturday's Division I state meet at Fortress Obetz and Memorial Park near Columbus. He finished 21st out of 32 individual state qualifiers at the Boardman regional last Saturday in a time of 17:22.1 to become the first Shoreman to advance to state since Tim Villari in 2013. "It's been a dream ever since I first started running cross country," Henry said of making state. "I just tried to keep my training week leading up to regionals as normal as possible and tried not to get super stressed out about the meet. All the workouts helped, but just staying in a positive frame of mind also made a big difference." Henry's running career has had more than its share of ups and downs and not so long ago it seemed like the downs were winning. In the spring, Henry's track season was cut short when he injured his left hip flexor while leading off the Shoremen's 4x800 relay at the Southwestern Conference meet. The injury happened with 300 meters left when he felt something pop. "It was devastating to have my season ended so abruptly due to something out of my control," Henry said. "After it happened I took a step back and began focusing on my teammates and their performances instead of my own. Seeing them achieve all of their goals helped me to not only take my mind off of the injury but also made me eager to come back and train harder than ever." That positive state of mind took a hit when he reinjured the same hip flexor roughly eight weeks later during a training run in late July. "I heard a pop and felt a bunch of pain in the exact same spot," Henry said. "This is when I started to get worried about my cross country season since I already had to take three to four weeks off in order for it to heal. This is where Coach (Rob) Juergens helped out a bunch. He was constantly reassuring me that there was plenty of time left in the season and that I would come back from this injury stronger than before. This helped me stay focused on my goals for the season and not give up so easily." Injuries weren't the only obstacle Henry faced, however. His regional performances at Boardman the last three years weren't especially encouraging. Although he always did well at the SWC and Elyria district meets, his regional finished were 93rd in 18:08.4 last year, 86th in 17:18.74 in 2019 and 113th in 18:18.13 in 2018. Then this season he finished only 17th out of 32 qualifiers at the Elyria district in 16:58.5. A decent performance, but nothing that would lead anyone to believe he would qualify to state seven days later. Even Henry had some doubt during the regional race. "I was a little worried about getting boxed in at the start since my starting box included other regional-qualifying individuals," he said. "During the first mile I was still behind a lot of guys and just on the edge of qualifying position (top 32). For a second I thought with all these guys out here I questioned myself if I was going to be able to do it. I quickly reassured myself during that moment that a lot of these guys had gone out very hard and would fade." Juergens, in his 24th year as Avon's Lake cross country coach, admitted he was pleasantly surprised at Henry's performance. "He didn't have a great junior year," Juergens said. "We just took it slow at the beginning of this summer and just got him back going. He missed one race (Avon Lake Earlybird) early in the season, but since then everything's been good and healthy. He's been building and building. He had a couple races where he got some confidence. His district race wasn't that great but he's just learned from races and has gotten better." A four-time regional qualifier, Henry was 12th at last year's district in 17:49.3, fifth in 16:50.43 in 2019 and 14th in 17:34.05 in 2018. "Even with the conference meet he was switching the lead (with Amherst sophomore Luke Bowlsby) for the first two miles," Juergens said. "He hit a little bit of a wall and ended up fourth. We then had some good workouts and he finally came to realize he can do it. Once he put that in his head you could tell the difference. He's worked hard. He deserves it. I'm glad for him that he was in the right frame of mind and just got it down. If you look at the results, a lot of the kids that beat him earlier in the season didn't do so well." A three-time All-Southwestern Conference runner, Henry also placed fourth as a junior at SWC meet in 17:07.1 after finishing seventh in 17:14.6 as a sophomore and 18th in 18:20.0 as a freshman. "The last few weeks Mr. Juergens really got me in the right mindset," said Henry, who would like to attend either Ohio or Purdue and major in electrical engineering. "He hyped me up, like 'You've got this.' He's always been there, even when I've been injured. He knew that I could get back into shape very fast. He said that the obstacles I was facing weren't going to stop me or change anything with my season. That really helped calm me down and kept my head in the game for the long run." Contact Paul Heyse at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.