Folders |
Carrying Tradition - Coach Kyle Benally Continuing The Legacy of Gallup High School ExcellencePublished by
Carrying Tradition - Coach Kyle Benally Continuing The Legacy of Gallup High School Excellence By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor Watch Making Footprints - Gallup High School's Running Legacy Series Kyle Benally didn’t seek this out. That’s what he tells people when asked how and why he became the cross country coach at Gallup High School. Of course, he loved what the program had once represented. He was part of legendary coach Curtis Williams’ final New Mexico state championship team in 2002.
He knew how powerful it was to be part of a program that not only stood for excellence but also was a visible symbol for the pride and dignity of the Navajo (Dine’) people. He knew, also, that coming out of the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic, a strong Gallup cross country team may inspire healthy lifestyle choices and physical fitness and represent a return to social life and togetherness without fear. Perhaps he could build a bridge, one that drew motivation from the successes of the past and forged ahead with a new generation eager to find connection and an outlet for honoring its ancestors. But others had tried to sustain, or rebuild, what Williams and assistant coach Spencer Sielschott had produced during the glory days of Gallup Bengals cross country. The school won 32 New Mexico state boys and girls championships over a span of 32 years, but none since 2007. Those recent attempts had fallen short. Benally, after graduating from Gallup in 2003, briefly attended Pima Community College in Arizona, but then veered off and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He spent 15 years as a Marine.
Early lessons from Coach Williams about discipline and responsibility and hard work had prepared him for the rigors of life in the military. And the Marines, as it turned out, prepared him for coaching. “It refined my leadership skills,” Benally said. “I already was a team leader in cross country, but the Marines helped me grow up. My work ethic got me promoted fast. I was leading my peers, some of which were older than me.” When the opportunity came to take the Gallup cross country job, he took it primarily so that he could ensure that his son, Kian, had a positive experience with it during his senior year. “That was the only reason I wanted to coach, was for him,” Benally said. “I didn’t want to keep going. It was my wife (Iris) and my son who said I’m good at this. That was my selling point. Hearing both of them say I was good at this, two people whose opinions I valued most, solidified everything.” Benally had a history of taking on daunting challenges, especially after being told he couldn’t do something. As a freshman at Gallup, in 1999, Benally had dreams of playing basketball until Williams pointed out that, at 5-foot-4, unless he was a marksman from the 3-point line he should consider running cross country. So Benally came out for cross country, lured by its high expectations of success. “Coming into a program that was synonymous with state titles, it just felt natural for me to be a part of it,” Benally said. But it wasn’t easy. Cross country at Gallup was a bit like a mini version of the Marine Corps. It demanded dedication and a desire to be part of something elite. “A senior came to me and said ‘Hey, you’re too slow to be a part of our team. You need to quit,’” Benally recalled. “And from that moment, it triggered something inside of me. I think that’s when my competitive edge developed. That same senior that said I was better off quitting? I was beating him by the end of that same season.” Benally’s tenacity paid off and he was part of a special team in a special era.
His time in high school overlapped with Felicia Guliford, who was one of the top female high school distance runners in the country during her time at Gallup. She won four consecutive state titles from 1998-2001. And Dustin Martin, today the Executive Director of Wings of America, an organization that serves to empower Native youth and their families through running, was a grade school student who idolized the Gallup runners and was around them frequently because his mother, Claudia, was an assistant coach. “I never felt like I came from an impoverished town,” Martin said. “Or an impoverished place or an impoverished tradition or an impoverished culture. It was rich and it was strong and it was powerful. And I just wanted to be part of it eventually when I was big enough.”
Eventually, Martin and his mother moved to Albuquerque before he got the chance to run for Gallup. He attended Albuquerque Academy, where he was a standout runner who finished 12th at Nike Team Nationals in 2006. Martin’s attachment to Gallup and his association with the cross country team when it was at the height of its influence, remains. And there are few who can match Martin’s eloquence when it comes to describing the deeper meaning of running to Native Americans. “I think running for the indigenous peoples of North America is something really rooted in the endurance of our ancestors,” Martin said. “Subsistence lifestyle. Whether you are an agriculturalist or a hunter-gatherer or a forager, it took a lot of work and time on your feet. And that strength and that time is rooted in us as native people. Today, we’re not required to cover so many miles or carry so much on a daily basis, but our cells have memory of that. And fortunately, running and the activity of running is one of these odd avenues in society where our strength as native people can come out and help us distinguish ourselves as some of the best athletes in the world.” From an early age, Navajo children learn that running is part of a sacred relationship between humans and the earth. “I mean, physically, it’s undeniable,” Martin said. “The impact of your footsteps on the earth has a reaction. And the earth and the beings that exist in it can feel that reaction, even if it’s ever so slight. And so I personally believe when I’m running and connecting with the earth in that way, that I’m giving my best to all of those things that animate my existence and those that I love and that that reverberation is somehow like a prayer.” What Williams did, as a white teacher who moved to the Gallup area from Oklahoma to take a job in 1971, was build trust and learn to tap into a vast reservoir of running talent. His first cross country team, in 1979, began with one student. Williams attended the chapter houses on the Navajo reservation to spread his vision of a running team and recruit more boys to join the team. By the end of the 1979 season one runner became 30. The Gallup Bengals were soon on the verge of a breakthrough. The coach was strict and demanding.
“I set down some hard rules,” Williams said. “Going back to 1982 is when our team met in the locker room and I wrote on the board: These are your rules. And the first thing I did was I talked about parties, talked about absentees. I talked about grades. I said we’re not going to have any tolerance for drugs or alcohol.” Williams got the boys, themselves, to vote on the rules. And from that point on, the rulebook became law. And success soon followed. In 1983, Gallup won the first of 12 straight titles in New Mexico’s largest classification. There were seven individual state champions on the boys side, including Virgil Thomas (1986-87) and Brandon Leslie (1993-94), who won it twice. Williams took over the girls team in 1984. Guliford was one of five individual champions he coached. The girls won 11 state titles on his watch and three more soon after he left. Life on the reservation was still hard. Many did not have electricity or indoor plumbing in their homes, which were spread over hundreds of square miles in the Northwest corner of the state. The terrain is stark and beautiful, but also dry and rocky. The climate extreme: summers are hot and the winters can be frigid. That toughness, that ‘endurance of our ancestors,’ fed Gallup’s winning ways in cross country. After Williams left in 2002, the momentum continued for a few more years. Gallup added another high school, Miyamura, in 2007. That was the last year the Bengals won a state cross country title. The talented runners in the area were now split into two schools. Gallup’s aura of invincibility wore off. In 2020, during the pandemic crisis, the impact of the virus on the Navajo Nation that surrounds Gallup and stretches far into Arizona and a strip of southern Utah, made national headlines. The infection rate was 3.5 times higher in the Navajo communities than the rest of the United States. People were dying, especially the elders who preserve and pass down vital aspects of language and culture, at an alarming rate. More than 2,200 people died of Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19, which is COVID in the Navajo language. It also brought the loss of jobs and stripped the community of a sense of security. In response, the reservation endured a strict curfew and its residents were advised to stay home in order to stay safe. This lockdown persisted longer on Navajo lands than almost anywhere else in the U.S. When the cross country season that was lost in the fall of 2020 returned for a brief season in the spring of 2021, the runners competed in masks. By then, Benally, who works for the Indian Health Service, was coaching at Gallup and doing his best to make the cross country team a safe space, first and foremost. “The challenges of COVID-19 were hard on everybody,” he said. “And for me to take over during that time, I’d like to hope that I brought confidence back into getting the kids out there, getting more people active.” Benally coaches students on this year’s team who didn’t just lose grandparents to COVID, but parents as well. The renewal of the program is not only an outlet for the runners to explore their abilities, it’s a way for some of them to honor family members that have been lost. Running, for senior Theodore Roundface, remained one of the few aspects of life that remained consistent while the impacts of COVID caused havoc.
“That’s kind of the only thing I really had during COVID,” Roundface said. “Just to keep me focused and something to keep me going during that time.” Even when the world seems turned upside down, the impact of feet against the earth and breath against the sky, is constant and centering. Now in his third year, with a team that is growing again and charting progress with each passing week, Benally sees his primary goal as getting his runners to believe in themselves. Believe, then achieve. No matter what they’ve been through. “I just give them positive reinforcement,” Benally said. “It’s done powerful things for us, the power of positivity. I want them believing in themselves, that they can do the things that they put their minds to. It takes one person believing in you to change the world, and that’s what they have in me.” The runners are buying in and Benally’s pedigree as a former state championship team member gives him credibility. “What I really enjoy is the support that he brings to the team,” Roundface said. “He really does believe that we can not only rekindle what the high school stood for in cross country a long time ago, but also to kind of push past that and try to do better.” Doing “better” might not be counted with state championships. Benally hopes to measure success in other, even more meaningful ways. “A lot of times sports are championship-driven. We have to win. We have to win a title to be successful,” he said. “I don’t care if we ever win a state title, but if I have a 99.9 percent rate of my athletes graduating high school and 95 percent of them going to college, that is more valuable to me than any state title ever will be.” Senior Ethan Brown said cross country kept him in the classroom. “Running got me through school, basically,” Brown said. “It helped me stay constant with my grades. It’s done a lot for me. It’s like therapy.” Junior Tiana Tom said she appreciates the support she gets from her teammates. “What I love about this team is that we are all like family together. We help each other out. We encourage each other,” she said. Freshman Mykeia Vicenti-Wolf is one of the only members of the team that is not Navajo. She is from Zuni, which has a different language and culture and she commutes 35 miles from south of Gallup. Earlier this fall, she participated in the first Harvest Dance in Zuni since the end of the pandemic.
In the dance, as in the run, her feet tap the earth with rhythm and purpose. In her first cross country season she has navigated the complexities of fitting in while making friends and becoming one of the top runners on the team, as well as a captain. “I want to improve a lot more from where I am right now,” she said. “Having the support of my family and them being at all of my races just helps me run faster. Knowing that I have people supporting me and following me with me every step.” On Nov. 11 in Albuquerque, Gallup finished third in the Class 4A boys and girls team competitions at the New Mexico state cross country championships, charting significant progress and moving up from eighth in both state finals last year. Two years ago, neither team qualified for state. Benally reminds his runners daily that there is a greater purpose to running than slogging through training miles. “One of the biggest things is I want them to always remember why you’re running and who you’re running for,” the coach said. “It reassures them they are doing the right thing.” -30- Watch Making Footprints - Gallup High School's Running Legacy Series |
(Logan Hannigan-Downs photo)