Think contrast: Hot and cold. Black and white. Short and tall. Tuba City, Ariz., and Cambridge, Mass.
Tuba City and Cambridge?
Tuba City off Highway 160 in Arizona on the border between the Navajo and Hopi nations and Cambridge, home of Harvard University near Interstate 93 just outside the Cradle of Liberty, Boston. There simply could not be two more contrasting cultures, which is the clash distance running standout Billy Orman will experience in the fall after deciding to head east.
The
Tuba City (Ariz.) senior, who captured the Foot Locker Western Regional at Mt. San Antonio College and finished sixth in the National Cross Country Championships a week later in San Diego, is both excited and more than a little anxious about the near-future change of scenery.
Having moved to the tiny town with two stoplights when he was 6 months old after his father took a job as a pediatrician at the local hospital where the native Americans from the two nations get care, Orman has only known the wide-open, hilly, high-desert community at 5,000 feet in the middle of nowhere.
Photo courtesy of Billy Orman
Billy Orman, front, will go from desert scenes like the TC Hill in the Bud Davis Invitational, to the Ivy League lifestyle of Harvard.
Just as he didn't plan to attend Harvard as a youngster, he also never had aspirations to be a national-level runner.
"In the seventh grade, Billy would come home from school around 2:30 and we wouldn't get home until 5, so he'd sit in front of the TV set," said his father, Bill. "I was sick of it. I didn't really push him to run, but it was either that or football."
Billy picks up the story although the start was so uneventful — and painful — he claims selective memory loss of the particulars.
"He told me to go out for this thing called cross country," Billy recalls. "I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't think a lot about it but the first day the weather was hot, in the high 90s, and very dry (as usual).
"We ran something like three miles and I walked most of it. When I finished I said to myself, 'No way, I'm not going to do this.' I was miserable. But my dad said not to quit quite yet, that if in a few weeks if I felt the same way, I could do something else."
His father wasn't pushing him into sports.
"No, but there aren't any after-school clubs like at some schools," said Bill. "I just wanted him to get out and do something. I just wanted him away from the television."
Billy did stick with it and noticed that after a while he was able to stay up with his teammates and he remembers something else.
"I made friends and we had something in common — running," he recalls. "Then in my first meet, I finished in second place to a teammate. I wasn't thinking anything at the time, but I kept with it. I don't know, it was sort of something to do. I was just a dumb kid then — still am."
Not quite.
Running provided an outlet and his grades improved almost as dramatically as his times. By the end of the season, he was the Arizona eighth grade champion, winning the 2-mile race in the big city, Phoenix.
You won't hear Billy complain much about Tuba City but getting in shape wasn't easy. First there is the altitude. Then there is the terrain — sandy soil that taxes the strongest of runners, especially in the nearby sand dunes.
When he gets to Cambridge, he'll have rivers and lakes. In Tuba City there is the town reservoir. In Cambridge he can run in the woods, even test the Freedom Trail. In Tuba City there are a few cottonwood trees planted by the Mormons a long time ago.
Asked about how he liked the famous ivy-covered walls at the university, Billy laughs and says, "there aren't any ivy-covered walls in Tuba City. There isn't any ivy."
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