Dedication and hard work has defined the sport of Cross Country, and with other common characteristics and goals shared by its athletes, has made the sport a discourse community. In spite of becoming more civil and modernized in recent times for competitive events, distance running has been in the bloodline of humans since the very first man; the pursuit of tracking and running down game for miles or the use of runners to relay messages from battle to battle gives testament to the heritage of Cross Country and the people within the discourse community. As a person currently on the VMI Cross Country team, in spite of the informality of using first person in a formal essay, I feel it is necessary that I share my experience and understanding to show the characteristics that make the VMI Cross Country team and overall sport a discourse community. Based on over 5 years within the sport, I am able to give testament to the fact that Cross Country as a whole and specifically VMI’s team fits the definition of a discourse community. Cross Country teams, such as VMI’s, are discourse communities in that they have a center of authority, common goals shared by its athletes, and unifying communication, lexis, and text that bonds the people on the team and separate them apart as a discourse community.

A defining feature of a discourse community, which is a center of authority, can be seen in Cross Country’s use of a head coach. VMI’s team illustrates this authority from their head coach, Jennifer Fazioli, who is a lifelong runner herself and attended one of the most prestigious college running programs in college at Colorado Boulder University. Running may seem to be simple and that it only requires to go out and run yet in more competitive areas of the sport Cross Country has required the need for a coach that can give athletes refined workouts formulated to meet the specific goals of each athlete. A coach sets the tone of the team since they are seen as a key source of knowledge and wisdom. A Cross Country team, specifically VMI’s, is a discourse community since a center of authority is present. A head coach creates bonds with their runners which encourages the pursuit of athletes to reach their goals as a team.

Another source of authority, in result of the long distance and constant strain on the bodies of Cross Country runners, is athletic trainers who are looked upon for advice and whom treat runner’s persisting acute injuries. VMI’s athletic trainer, who treats numerous amounts of the team injuries every week, is Meghan. The trainer is a large center of authority for runners since they understand the stress put upon runners bodies and can give insight on how to treat their injuries so runners can be able to train at peak performance. From a sprained ankle to season ending stress fractures a trainer is used by all Cross Country runners to help maintain and prevent injuries from occurring.  Without trainers and their authority over the runners to guide them away from injury the Cross Country community would become a much more damaged and broken place.

Stemming from the guidance of the sources of authority within the community, a Cross Country team sets common goals. A main goal of every Cross Country team is to win at their championship race and to support each other as individuals throughout the season. For VMI, their championship race is the Southern Conference meet. These goals to win and support each other set the tone of the Cross Country community by creating strong bonds between its runners as they strive towards success as a team while still offering each other friendly competition.

Since the goal of every Cross Country team is to win, the community values persistent hard work and the idea to never quit even after the point of exhaustion. The community reflects this belief in the strength of bonds that are created between runners that will last throughout their lives. In order to achieve their goals, Cross Country runners must maintain the high level of conditioning within the sport while still preventing injury from occurring. A Cross Country runner must do this via trainers and proper stretching and cooling down after every race if they want to continue to strive toward their main goal as a Cross Country runner: to run as fast as possible and place within the top five on the team in order to score and win as a team.

To score in a race every runner must understand the communication within the community, such as understanding the body language of an opponent to know when he or she is worth passing or staying with. The goal to score individually and strive towards success as a team has led to the Cross Country community’s unique communication and lexis. In response, the development of unique communication and lexis such as fartlek’s, tempo workouts, strides, accelerations, and economy work that has defined the communication of the sport. While many people would expect to think that individual words or phrases were developed, while some were, the community has developed a different kind of communication that is not traditional to the normal human verbal speech. Body language is the key communication used in the Cross Country discourse community. When performing at these high levels of aerobic strain speaking can sometimes be very challenging. Cross Country runners can understand different signs from a runner such as flailing hands or hunched shoulders that tell a competitor that their opponent is tired and passable. The movement of a teammate’s encouraging hand tells them each to move up and work together as a team to maintain their current pace. This nonverbal communication can also be heard as runners hear the heavy breathing that is struggling, or the encouraging grunt of a teammate to move faster. Even though these forms of communication are not traditional to most communities of speech they still are the key factors of the lexis and communication that set Cross Country apart as its own discourse community. Understanding these forms of communication, such as reading the body language of an opponent, allows a runner to accomplish their goal to score in a race and thus win as a team.

Cross Country communication, while it may seem deduced to simply grunting and hand motions, has multiple genres within itself that can change drastically depending on the individual runner and whether the run is a race, hard workout, or a simple recovery day. The genre can be deathly serious and focused as a runner mentally prepares for the task at hand, such as a championship race or an important workout that will mark his or her place on the team. In spite of this, directly after race the communication genre can change sharply to being happy and outgoing as the endorphins from the workout or race set in and the relief of running well changes the mood and the overall communication between the runners. The changing of genres of communication shows that the community is diverse by having its own variances in communication that define the community, all of which depend on the goal they are trying to accomplish at the time.

The diverse genres of communication between the runners within the community are not always face to face, which can be seen in their solution created in an area known to be their expertise: long distance communication. By documenting and recording their running times on a central website they have developed a universal text within the Cross Country Community; the website is milestat.com. Using this website, which allows the runners to look up any competitor or meet results ever recorded the community has developed their own central text and communication. The website fits the idea of a community being connected by a common text that shows runners how their competition is doing throughout the season and bonds the Cross Country community together into their very own discourse community. . The communication, lexis, and common text shared within the community words has prominently defined the mentalities and attitudes of the Cross Country runners and thus separates the community from other similar communities.

The separation of the Cross Country community can even be seen in other communities of running such as sprinting. While Cross Country runners can sprint, they separate themselves from traditions sprinters in that their community is far more about completing large volumes of miles, 80-100 miles a week for serious D1 college competitors, then simply refining short bursts of energy. In result, the community of distance runners has developed unique lexis and intercommunication within their specific community that even other runners, such as sprinters, cannot say they are a part of. On their distance runs the runners within the community have developed prominent respect for each other since they understand the dedication and hard work required to be able to maintain this high mileage. Thus separating them from other runners like sprinters who do not share this bond of respect in the same way as distance runners do. Most runners believe they are a part of any running community once they begin to run, yet fail to realize the expansive volume and separation of the sport of Cross Country from simple traditional running. This separation from running of only a few short miles at a time, and the jump to entering the Cross Country community, can be observed in a new runner entering a team. The new runner in the community will first find themselves entering the community when they go on a long run the first time with their new team. Besides realizing the strain of running, the new runner will slowly begin to see the language between the runners and the communication of the sport as they run side by side the team for miles while sometimes never saying a word. The separation, which can be seen in the experience of freshman just entering the sport, shows that Cross Country is its own discourse community even between other running communities because of the deep respect between its runners and the high mileage they endure.

The discourse community of Cross Country teams, specifically VMI’s, should not be overlooked. Runners have been in the bloodlines of humans since the first very first man and while some may only see the community as a handle full of gauntly looking people running around in short shorts they must not overlook the history of the sport and the hard work and dedication of those that run and come together to make up the discourse community. The bonds created in the community through the time spent on long runs and respect gained from fierce competition creates relationships that will last a life time. These relationships make it seem that once a person joins a Cross Country team, such as when I joined VMI’s, they will remain in the discourse community in many ways for the rest of their lives. The discourse community of Cross Country builds upon an individual’s ability to take accountability of themselves for their team and instructions from their head coach in order to accomplish their goals to win as a team and strive as individuals. In the process, runners in the discourse community of Cross Country learn the unique forms of communication within the community as they better themselves in strenuous physical conditioning and develop friendships and a competitive attitude that will stay with them forever.