Student-Athlete Profile: Sederick Green

It starts in the legs.

 

Pain begins to creep up, first from the ankles, then to the knees, until you feel each jolt as your feet hit the concrete.

 

Your arms become heavy. With each step you feel as if another 10 pounds has been added between your wrists and shoulders.

 

Your heart feels like it might jump out of your chest.

 

Your lungs scream for air.

 

Every muscle in your body begs you to stop.

 

Now imagine doing this for five miles, non-stop.

 

Welcome to what Sederick Green does for fun.

Every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, the Virginia State University junior dons his running shoes and puts his body through the kind of punishment that most of us would shake our head at.

He runs until his body aches.  He runs until his chest burns.  If he pauses, even to catch his breath, his eyes never leave the distance he has yet to cover.

Just one more mile.  Just one more kilometer. 

“He lives for cross-country season,” said VSU head cross-country coach Les Young.

 

So far this season, Green has been the most successful and most consistent of all of the runners in Young’s stable. Green has been the top Trojan finisher in all the meets save one, and that was a meet that he didn’t compete in.

 

“He hasn’t peaked yet,” said Young. “He’s gotten better every race, and he’s found a new dedication to running.”

 

Green, who hails from Norfolk, Va., and is majoring in sports management, has been the lynchpin in what could be Young’s finest cross-country squad. So far this season, the Trojans are undefeated in CIAA competition, with only non-CIAA members Southern Virginia University and the University of the District of Columbia besting VSU in any meet.

 

It was through Young that Green landed on the Ettrick campus.

 

“I wanted to come to VSU because of I thought it would be the best place to continue my learning and because I knew of Coach Young,” Green said. “He was a coach in the district of my high school and I had known him through middle school.”

 

Since September 8, Green has gotten progressively faster in each race. In the Virginia Union Meet, he finished the eight-kilometer course in 32:48, in the VSU Classic on September 15, his time was 29:12, and in the Bowie State Invitational, he ran the course in a time of 28:25.

 

All this in a year in which saw Green suffer injury which kept him from running almost his entire sophomore year.

 

“I knew something was wrong with my knee,” he said. “I knew it was really bad.”

 

Doctors knew something was wrong too, but diagnosing the ailment proved tricky.

 

“They shot cortisone into my knee,” said Green. “It made the pain go away, but I knew the injury was still there.”

 

“He had a terrible knee problem, and we couldn’t figure out what it was,” said Young.

 

The mystery ailment turned out to be tendonitis, one of the most painful injuries a runner can suffer. The only real treatment for tendonitis is rest in order so the body can form scar tissue.

 

Some cases take six weeks to heal. Some cases take a year.

 

Green’s case took almost his entire sophomore year.

 

“I participated, but I wasn’t 100 percent,” he said.

 

“He literally had tears in his eyes when the trainer told him that he could not run,” Young said. “It was frustrating for him, to say the least.”

 

For the first time in his life, Green had to sit and watch as others ran.

 

“It was very hard,” Green said. “Especially when I saw the freshmen that Coach Young had coming in. “I really wanted to run with them because I had practiced so hard during the summer. To watch them train and compete, and not being able to help, was really painful for me.”

 

Even with the injury, Young kept Green on the active roster. Green made his first step towards returning at the 2006 CIAA Cross-Country Championships.

 

“He finished 17^th out of 88 runners,” Young said. “He was instrumental in our finishing second at the championships.”

 

Now Green is healthy, and running at full speed. 

 

And the Trojans have their sites set on dethroning defending CIAA champion Saint Augustine’s at the Cross-Country Championships on October 17.