Paulo Guedes| Hometown: Somerville, Mass. | Accounting & Finance

As I warmed up for the last time at the GNAC Championship race this past October, I truly began to reflect on all of my experiences throughout my four seasons with the cross country team. 

Prior to coming to Suffolk, I was a part of a D1 high school track & field team. Many of my teammates at the time held fantastic personal records in their individual races, and continue to progress throughout their careers. One of my past teammates, Andre Rolim (American International College), has held the Massachusetts State record for the fastest 800-meter time throughout his high school career, and continued to thrive through college. Marcelo Brociner (Brandeis University) and Travis Dolcine (UMass Dartmouth) are other past teammates of mine that also did outstandingly well in their races. These three individuals always pushed me to challenge myself on the track, one way or another. I strived to be as good as these guys were, and I was expecting to do so throughout my college career. The terms of being “better” applied in ways I’d never expect. 

Throughout my first year at Suffolk, I noticed that we had a cross country team that wasn’t exposed thoroughly throughout Suffolk’s student body at the time. For some races, there weren’t enough runners on the team, so the coach would have to recruit student-athletes from other sports to run our races with us. Some people would think that being a part of a team that has no committed runners, with a split mix of occasional basketball, baseball and hockey players is a waste of time. I even began to question if it was worth joining, but I decided to give it a chance. I would never think that being in such a diversified team would be so beneficial. I ran my first-ever 8-kilometer race with five of Suffolk’s hockey players, and one actual runner. The same thing happened with the baseball team for my second race. I was new to Suffolk, and all of these guys helped me fit into a team that they were barely a part of. I began to build relations with a lot of Suffolk’s student-athletes. After my first season, I knew I’d be running throughout the rest of my college career, regardless of the team I was running with. 

By my second and third season, the cross country team got a new coach, James Peterson, and with that came a legitimate team, so we (unfortunately) didn’t need to recruit other athletes for our races. We trained harder, improved overall as a team and began to move up a few positions in the GNAC Championship. With some of the runners that were on the team in those two seasons, I began to feel that same sense of challenging myself like I did in high school, specifically with my fellow teammates Alex Marcus and Dave Campisano. Running with these guys, I realized that the vision I had of being ‘better’ than how I ran in high school was completely different than from what I expected. Dave, who was in his mid-30s, was entering his first-ever season of cross country with no running experience prior to joining, after serving in the United States Army for 16 years, and was surpassing any time I have ever accomplished in an 8K race. He finished his first season with a great personal record, somewhere along of the lines of 28:40. I continuously questioned how I couldn’t be as good as he was, and that was when I realized I was looking at everything the wrong way. 

Being a part of such a diversified cross country team helped me realize that only I, myself, can define what is best for me. If you are comparing yourself to others, it can lead to you to senseless aggravation and confusion when you don’t see yourself at the same level that someone else is on. It took me a while to notice and accept this, but eventually I gave in to this ideology. I picked a good time to understand this, as I entered my last season with a tendonitis injury. I was never able to reach my personal records like I did in my last three seasons with the team, but I accepted that I was still trying as best as I could. Although my performance was not as good as it was before, I still had a great set of teammates and another new coach, Will Feldman, behind me. 

I knew that throughout my four seasons of cross country I gave it my all, with the consideration of balancing practice with classes, working, networking and so on. I managed to land the role as the team’s captain, as well as a spot on the GNAC All-Sportsmanship team for three of the four seasons, and I’m glad to have received such honors. I see a great future to come with the current men and women’s cross country teams, looking on how well the management of the team has improved over the years.

To my fellow teammates, Michael Rotchford, Dave Campisano, Alex Marcus, and Eddie Lui; thank you all for helping me to reach my potential in cross country. I wish you guys nothing but the best in your futures in all aspects of life. 

Also, to Emma Weisse and Emily Manfra; both of you are phenomenal runners and I can already see the successes that will come to the women’s team in the next two years because of both of your talents. 

To my past coaches and coach Will Feldman; thank you for giving me a different outlook on running throughout all of your different methods of training, as it helped me build my knowledge in running and how I can always critique my performance as a runner. Everything I learned, while being a part of this great team are lessons I will always look back on in the future.

Sincerely, 

Paulo Guedes