Al Seither is desperate.

Loyola’s cross country coach is running a race against the calendar as he searches for a male runner – any male runner – willing to join an undermanned cross country team as a walk-on.

Seither opened the season with four runners; to compete for honors in the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, Loyola needs five runners.

“No matter if (Loyola’s current runners) are the first four guys across the finish line (at the GCAC championships), we won’t finish first in time honors,” he said.

Seither is puzzled by his situation. It’s the not the first time in his tenure at Loyola that he’s started the season short-handed – but it is the first time he’s seen absolutely no interest from potential walk-ons.

“I wish I knew what I could do,” Seither said. “We’re giving kids the opportunity to run on a collegiate level.”

Seither doesn’t know if the team is feeling the recruiting lag Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the university, or whether it’s simply that less athletic-minded students are opting to attend Loyola.

The priority regarding walk-ons, at this stage, he said, isn’t whether they are good or in shape.

“Good comes,” Seither said, confident in his ability to mold a runner’s enthusiasm into a contributing role. “I just need kids to show up. I’m willing to make concessions I normally wouldn’t. The kid could conceivably work, I could manage something with him.”

The most common excuses Seither has heard from students at Loyola he’s approached about running cross country involve work and mainly from locals post-Katrina residential strains.

Seither, however, simply wants an individual who can put the responsibility of training on himself.

“Do schoolwork. Make your job. When you have time, I want you to train,” Seither said about potential runners among Loyola’s student body as he oversaw his stars, history junior Richard Bouckaert and finance senior Matt Cagigal, training at the Fly.

“There’s a possibility someone at Loyola could run collegiately and might not need to train with the team. I don’t really want to do that, but circumstances dictate it. My priority is for Loyola to field both a women’s and men’s team.”

“If there’s somebody out there thinking about it, come see me,” Seither said.

Sound crazy? To just walk-on and possibly win honors? It’s not. A walk-on helped the 2004 men’s cross country team win the GCAC crown.

2004 GCAC championships

Bouckaert and Cagigal tanked through the 8k course at the 2004 GCAC championships in Clinton, Miss. They finished one second apart from each other, one after the other.

Bouckaert logged in a time of 28 minutes, 39 seconds – it topped the runner’s field at Clinton.

Cagigal’s 28:40 mark boosted Loyola’s scoring invaluably.

‘Pack runner Pablo Guth, history sophomore, recorded a 30:22 finish time, good enough for a sixth place finish; and Andrew Fell crossed the finish line 22 seconds later in seventh place.

At that point, with the pace the Wolfpack scored points on that day, Loyola headed the field comfortably.

But communications senior Mitch Wallace, a relatively inexperienced walk-on and Loyola’s fifth runner, had not yet finished the race.

And, as Wallace soldiered through the Clinton course, he collapsed at the foot of a hill. At the top of that hill was the finish line.

If Wallace didn’t finish the race, he wouldn’t earn any points – Bouckaert and Cagigal’s one-two punch at the front of the field would be for naught in terms of conference team honors.

A wilting Wallace, with Loyola’s championship aspirations resting on his overtaxed limbs, willed himself up to his knees and elbows and literally clawed toward the finish line to score the points necessary to claim the GCAC crown.

“I’m as proud of that guy as anything,” Seither said. With Wallace’s points he earned a tidy personal accolade to supplement his 2003 Men’s Cross Country Coach of the Year award.

“It was awesome,” Bouckaert said of Wallace’s finish line dramatics. “His eyes weren’t even open.”

As a result, the ‘Pack qualified for the NAIA regionals, and there they placed for nationals.

Used to short turnouts

Starting the season’s slate of meets as part of an undermanned squad is nothing new to program cornerstones Bouckaert and Cagigal.

“Since I’ve been here, we haven’t started the season with a full team,” Bouckaert said at the end of a practice run at the Fly. “We just hope guys will come around.”

And, until this year, they usually have.

“Having a team makes everything that much better. You could not even accomplish anything, and it’d still be worthwhile,” Cagigal added.

Recognizing that cross country’s nature has never catered to spectators, Cagigal attributes his motivation during practices to his team of runners.

Amid a fervent Wolfpack Nation campaign, a single walk-on this year – Cagigal’s last – from those ranks would mean more to the program’s cornerstones than the entire school cheering them on at a meet.

“Rich and Matt would rather one guy close to them (in training, in competing) than the whole school out there,” Seither said.

“We really count on the walk-ons,” Bouckaert said.

With the core built around him and Cagigal, there’s been enough in the talent pool in Loyola’s general populace to maintain a competitive program, as the 2004 title attests. “Once they’re in it, they love it,” Cagigal said.

“No other team in the league has a strong five. With the (hypothetical) walk-on, Loyola would do well,” Bouckaert added.

As Bouckaert and Cagigal wound down from their training run in the Fly’s parking lot, the saffron sun setting over the sparkling Mississippi River behind them, they seemed ready, but not resigned to, the reality that they might not compete for team honors in Cagigal’s swan-song season at Loyola.

“Having a short turnout, it’s just us running for individual awards. It’s still a team, either way,” Cagigal said.

But a walk-on could bolster the ‘Pack men in their bid to re-claim a title they couldn’t defend last year because of Hurricane Katrina.

Bouckaert added: “People have done it before. We know they are out there.”

Ramon Vargas can be reached at [email protected].