Issac Acosta, who runs a 15:41 5K, is the model of the long-suffering sports fan.
He likes basketball, he tells the Sun. The Warriors? No way, he said. He’s a Lakers fan. “I still have faith in them.” When he watches football, he roots for the Raiders.
“Maybe next year,” he said.
What Acosta’s sports teams can’t do—namely, win—he can. The Lompoc junior has won two cross-country races so far this year, running against dozens of other schools. He’s got his eyes on CIF, maybe State after that, and is hoping to shave his 5K down to the 15-minute mark by the end of the season.
He wants to run in college too, he said. “And if I get better, maybe the Olympics. If I keep pushing myself, we’ll see. Only time will tell.”
He started running his freshman year of high school—his sister did it, and he wanted to try it out, he said. “She quit, and I just kept on running.”
As a kid, with his All-Star AYSO soccer team, he went to nationals in Tennessee and came home with a trophy. He’s still close with the kids from that team, he said, and he’s close with his cross-country teammates as well.
“We mess around with each other a lot,” he admitted. “It might seem like we’re hating on each other, but we’re all friends.”
They’re guided by the watchful eye of Casey Brooks, Lompoc’s cross-country coach. “He really pushes you and motivates you a lot, and he never talks down on you,” Acosta said. “And he really wants you to show up to practice. He doesn’t like it when people miss practice.”
But why would Acosta miss practice? He loves running, and he boasts to the Sun that “I don’t see no hard parts” about it.
“Everything is just a breeze,” he said.
Everything, that is, but the last section of Mount SAC: The famous course, which hosts the largest cross-country race in the world each year, is familiar to anyone involved with high school cross-country in California. It has three deadly hills. Acosta’s least favorite is the last, called Poopout—the final stretch before the finish line.
“You’re almost done, and it’s holding you back,” he said. “You’re just like, ‘no.’”
Then, he made a point to throw in a Lompoc shoutout: “I want to put my city out there,” he said. “People call it Lom-pock. It’s Lom-poke. Nobody knows about this small town.”
This article appears in Oct 15-22, 2015.