Motivated by late collapse and disappointing finish last season at Foot Locker Nationals, Wake Forest commit inspired to produce big performance in NXN debut

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

He’s been as driven and focused as anyone representing California in the postseason with a singular goal in mind.

The goal even changed, yet JSerra senior Anthony Grover is still consumed.

Motivated by a disappointing ending to last season and now, fueled by a desire to compete with the best in the country, the Wake Forest-bound Grover is focused on finishing his senior cross country season with a bang.

He’ll get that chance at the Nike Cross Nationals meet at Glendoveer Golf Course in Portland, Ore., in an event that wasn’t even on the forefront of his mind a month ago.

The boys championship race is at 10:05 a.m. PST Saturday.

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Grover became the first Division 4 athlete, regardless of gender, to win three consecutive California state championships Saturday when he ran the 5-kilometer Woodward Park course in Fresno in 15 minutes, 3.2 seconds. He won by 14 seconds over Scotts Valley’s Mitchell Ross.

Grover also became just the fourth male athlete overall in California to win three consecutive titles in any division in the 33-year history of the state championship meet.

“I felt like (Saturday) was really good,” Grover said after the race. “I did what I wanted to do, which was go under 15:05 and get the win.”

A year ago, Grover ran in the Foot Locker regional and national championship races and collapsed toward the end of the final at San Diego’s Morley Field and finished last.

As recently as the Trinity League finals in early November, Grover said he was motivated by an opportunity to return to the Foot Locker national meet and settle unfinished business.

That same day, though, Grover’s coach, Marty Dugard, left the door open to the NXN possibility.

“If someone asks,” he said, “that might change the equation.”

The equation apparently did change. Grover’s state-meet time was good enough to make him one of the five individual qualifiers from California.

It was too tempting.

“Just the competition,” Grover said. “It would be nice to redeem myself at Foot Locker, but if the competition’s going to be at NXN, that’s where I want to be.”

That he got himself to this point in his senior year also speaks volumes.

Grover has six wins to his credit, but the race that really made heads turn was the one in which he finished second.

At the Mt. SAC Invitational in October, Grover finished as the runner-up, in 14:36, to Arizona Division 1 champion Leo Daschbach, a senior at Highland High who was considered a threat to challenge for a national title, but decided not to race beyond his state meet because of a knee injury.

“We hadn’t done any speed work whatsoever,” Dugard said. “For him to run at 14:36 just on strength alone tells me that once we start adding a little bit of speed, he’s going to be that much faster.”

He followed that with his third consecutive Trinity League title and a cruising win in 14:53.9 at the CIF Southern Section finals at Riverside.

Grover’s run at the state meet was six seconds better than the Clovis Invitational, also run at Woodward Park, where he was fifth in a loaded championship race behind Newbury Park senior teammates Nico Young and Jace Aschbrenner, Daschbach and Jesuit senior Matt Strangio.

Even though Grover is a defending state champion, won all four 3-miles races he entered in 2018 and was fourth in the state last year in the 1,600 meters in track – in a personal-best 4:10.60 – he still seems to be running at another level in 2019.

“I’m his coach, so I’m completely biased,” Dugard said. “But I see him every day in practice. He’s physically strong, He’s gotten taller. His stride has opened up a little bit. He’s as mentally tough as anybody I’ve ever coached. When he races to win, he’s fearless. We saw it at Mt. SAC.”

“This year, I’ve just been responding really well to the training and following everything my coach has been telling me to do,” Grover said, “and staying focused the 22 hours (per day) I’m not with him.”

Whatever happens Saturday, he’ll leave a legacy at JSerra and in Southern California. He won’t think about it, he said, and his coach agreed.

“I don’t think he thinks about it; I really don’t,” Dugard said. “I think about it. I’m one of those people, I look at stats, and I look at records. I love comparisons.

“He wants to win.”