As a 24-year-old, Chris Fox thought his days as a professional runner were numbered. Fox was coming off a serious ankle injury, and his running future was left up in the air.

Fox, now the Syracuse track and field head coach, had a cyst in his ankle that had to be removed and replaced with bones from his shin. At that time, it was an experimental procedure. Doctors told him he might never be able to run again.

Though Fox eventually resumed a professional running career, that busted ankle ended up being his big break.

‘The injury was a blessing in disguise,’ Fox said.

Because of that injury, and the uncertainty that came with it, Fox was offered the chance to coach North Carolina’s long-distance runners on the cross country team.

‘Being the distance coach at UNC made it a lot easier,’ Fox said of dealing with his potentially career-ending injury. ‘I went from runner to one of the better jobs in the country.’

Fox went from UNC to two other schools, coaching the cross country program at each stop. Now he’s the head man at Syracuse. No matter where he’s coached, he’s won. And that includes SU, a position he calls his ‘dream job.’ It’s what he’s attempting to continue this season as the Orange is about to enter the brunt of its Big East schedule.

Winning has become synonymous with any school at which Fox has landed. No matter what talent he’s been dealt, Fox has found a way to mold top runners.

At North Carolina, head coach Dennis Craddock still remembers calling Fox’s long-distance runners the ‘no-name stars.’ Many were walk-ons or had not been heavily recruited by other schools. But with the direction of Fox, the team became a success.

During Fox’s three years at UNC, he led the Tar Heels to an ACC championship — the school’s first in six years. The Tar Heels have yet to win another ACC championship since then, and in Craddock’s 26-year tenure, it’s the only time the cross country team placed in the top five in the country, Craddock said.

‘We really didn’t have a superstar or a bunch of superstars,’ Craddock said. ‘But we kept people who were good, and they believed in what we trying to do and believed in Coach Fox’s training. They were just unstoppable. They were just hungry for being really good.’

Fox’s next college coaching job came seven years later, when he spent one season at George Washington after pursuing his professional career. Though uneventful, it led to a chance at Auburn.

There, Fox was dealing with limited resources, but once again he would not settle for failure.

Fox’s indoor and outdoor track and field teams churned out a second-place finish at the NCAA championship in 2003. Fox said he also coached five or six All-Americans.

What makes it even more impressive is Fox was only granted a scholarship and a half with which to entice recruits.

‘He had to deal with different athletes,’ said Mel Rosen, who was Auburn’s head coach when Fox was a student and a consultant when he was the coach. ‘Outstanding athletes and middle-of-pack athletes. And he did a good job handling them all, and almost all his athletes made some progress.’

Although Fox was the cross country coach and not the head of the track and field program, Rosen expected Fox would one day be calling all the shots for his own team.

That day came when Fox was hired by SU in 2005. Since then, the program has been in the fast lane.

The men’s team cracked the national rankings for the first time in the program’s history. Long-distance runners have consistently qualified to compete in nationals. The men’s cross country team won the Big East championship two years in a row after never having won it before.

In 2005, the women’s and men’s cross country teams placed 13th at the NCAA Northeast regional. This past fall, both nabbed first-place finishes.

‘I’m happy with our progress, but we want to get a lot better,’ Fox said.

Syracuse running was once an afterthought. Now it’s in the mind of all its competitors. Fox hopes that progress continues to be on the rise, including this season.

‘We set our expectations high, and the core group gets a little older, and they’re able to train a little harder and able to think a little bigger,’ Fox said. ‘All we talk about here is trying to be one of the best teams in the whole country, so that’s what the kids shoot for.’

It’s a mindset that has carried through from Fox’s time at Auburn. There, runner Sherridan Kirk struggled to keep up with his own coach. Kirk and Fox would occasionally run 200 meters side by side on the track at Auburn. Although Kirk is about 20 years younger than Fox, he still had to pour all his effort into running when the two went head to head.

‘That was the worst experience I really and truly had in my life, because I never believed that it would have been that hard running against my coach,’ said Kirk, an Olympian for Trinidad and Tobago.

‘Knowing that he was such an exceptional athlete himself, you tend to respect what he has to say.’

Even when Fox came up with something far-fetched to do in practice, Kirk said his runners were more likely to trust him because Fox has been in his athletes’ shoes. And he’s been successful as well.

Fox ran competitively for about 15 years, both nationally and internationally. His college years were spent at Auburn, where Fox still holds records that have yet to be touched more than 20 years later. His times in the indoor and outdoor 5,000-meter run are still the best times for any Auburn Tiger.

His record as a runner is how Kirk knows what Fox says will usually be right. That goes with SU runners, too.

Roman Acosta said if anyone were to ever question Fox, all Fox would have to do is mention the records he holds and the places he’s gone to compete.

‘He’s been there,’ said Acosta, an SU distance runner. ‘He’s been injured, he’s been overseas, he’s been in championship races. He pretty much almost made the Olympics.’

Fox was in five Olympic trials. He said he needed a third-place finish to qualify, but came up short by a couple seconds on multiple occasions.

The reason SU athletes listen to whatever Fox tells them to do without hesitation is the same reason they come to run at Syracuse in the first place.

When Forrest Misenti was on his official visit, he was convinced through Fox’s tutelage that he’d transform into the runner he wanted to become. The same day, he committed to Syracuse.

Although SU running didn’t have a wealth of history, Fox’s credentials as a professional and college athlete enticed Misenti, now a junior.

‘I really liked how he had a great career,’ Misenti said. ‘Just off his training alone, he could guide me to success.’

It’s what he’s been doing ever since he found his dream job at Syracuse. Fox thought he found it coaching cross country at Auburn, his alma mater. To Fox, it was a big deal to be part of the same program he once ran for.

As it turned out, the ‘right place’ was more than 17 hours and 1,000 miles away in Central New York.

‘That’s the nature of coaching,’ Fox said. ‘Not many guys are like coach (Jim) Boeheim or coach (John) Desko, where they’ve been in one place their entire life. Most of us bounce around until we find that right place.’

That right place for Fox is here in Syracuse. He knew it two months into the job.

And Fox plans to stay awhile. He is signed through the 2013 season. He envisions an SU program that can continue to climb to new heights. It’s a program he hopes won’t only contend in the Big East, but nationally.

‘I had an opportunity to be good at Auburn,’ Fox said. ‘I had an opportunity to be great here.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

 

Published on March 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm