By CHRIS COOK
LongwoodLancers.com
 
For 30 minutes, Longwood cross country coach Catherine Hanson lost her best runner. Russell Reed, Longwood's 5K record holder and fifth-year senior known as "Big Dog" to his teammates, had disappeared into the woods, departing from the rest of his tube-bound teammates who were floating down the James River on their annual preseason retreat.
 
Hanson saw her lone senior jump onto the river bank to retrieve a discarded aluminum can but lost sight of him as he trekked further into the trees.
 
"I was sincerely worried because I had no idea where he was," said Hanson. "We didn't have much further to go down the river, and when we got to the pickup station, I'm like how's he going to get back? Then we get to the vans, and he's just standing there. I was like 'I knew it. I knew you would get out and run barefoot through the woods to get back here before me.' And he just laughed and said yeah and I got 10 cans out of the river doing it.
 
"That's just him. That's classic Russell."
 
Classic Russell ended up running more than a mile barefoot through the woods collecting garbage because he knew nobody else would. What motivated him to turn a leisurely team-building activity into a personal campaign for the environment is just one of many examples of the internal drive that not only got Reed into college, but turned him into one of the best runners in Longwood cross country history.
 
Reed would not be in college if not for his sport. In high school, he knew college would be difficult to afford on his own, so he put his athletic gifts to use in search of a scholarship. He played football, wrestled and ran cross country and track in hopes that a college coach – any coach, any sport – would offer him an opportunity.
 
"I really didn't have the funds to make school happen otherwise," said Reed. "Track in the spring, football and cross country at the same time in the fall, and I wrestled. I did that year-round, kind of with the idea that one of them would take me somewhere."
 
Reed had success in all four, serving as a three-year captain on the football team, winning back-to-back region titles in wrestling, two more regional track titles in the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter, and earning all-district and all-region honors in cross country. Ultimately, while cross country would become his calling card, it wasn't his times on the trail that got him noticed by Longwood head cross country coach Catherine Hanson, but rather his performance on the wrestling mat.
 
Hanson first encountered Reed by happenstance, having her first conversation with the eventual Longwood record holder shortly after he went up against her oldest son, Michael, at the 2011 Virginia High School State Wrestling Championship. Hanson initiated the conversation with Reed out of cordiality, but things took a different turn when Reed mentioned he also ran cross country.
 
"He probably had 15 to 20 more pounds of muscle on him than he does now," Hanson said. "He definitely looked like a wrestler or football kid instead of our cross country guys."
 
Hanson noted that Reed was never on her radar as a prospect, and his cross country times weren't fast enough to draw attention from a college coach. However, the athleticism and fitness he displayed in the wrestling match against her son were enough to keep her interest piqued. What followed next sealed the deal.
 
"We spoke about his life situation and who his primary guardians were, what his parental roles were," she said. "And basically he was raised by a single mom in Matthews, Virginia, and everything he did he was self-motivated to do. His grandma played a big role in his life, helped out financially quite a bit.
 
"But it was the way he spoke about his mom and the way he spoke about his grandma that was so beyond the maturity you expect from someone in high school. It was so beyond the ability of someone who was just 17 years old to show such depth of appreciation, that I thought this is a really character kid, and I'd like to help this family."
  Fast-forward five years, and Reed repaid Hanson's faith in him by becoming one of the best runners in Longwood history. He set the school's 5K record as a sophomore and came within 15 seconds of breaking that mark again as a senior. He was Longwood's top finisher in every race his final season and represented the university, along with junior women's runner Gracie Piekarski, at the renowned ECAC/IC4A Invitational in Bronx, N.Y. for his final race.
 
"You're talking about a kid that played football and wrestled becoming your best runner his senior year. That's all workhorse," Hanson said. "He is 150 percent workhorse in everything he does. Everything."
 
The workhorse will graduate from Longwood this weekend with a 3.33 grade point average as an anthropology major who triple-minored in criminal justice, outdoor education and environmental studies. He aims to become a Virginia conservation officer – formerly known as a game warden – and has geared his studies at Longwood to help him become just that.
 
That career is a natural fit for Reed, a lifelong outdoorsman likely to forego a relaxing tubing trip with his friends to pick up trash, solo and barefooted, in the woods.
 
"I feel like the environment is extremely important, but it's thoroughly abused and misused," he said. "I thought if I was going into a career, and hypothetically if my finances weren't an issue, what would I do to have an impact? That's what I came up with."
 
As a conservation officer, Reed will join a branch of law enforcement tasked with regulating hunting and fishing, policing damage to the environment, and search and rescue in the wilderness. He has already gained a wealth of real-world experience in the field, joining officers in Prince Edward and Cumberland counties on ride-alongs over the past several years.
 
At the advice of those game wardens who have shown him the ropes – two of which are Longwood alumni – Reed will spend his first two years after graduation pursuing personal interests before officially joining the agency. For Reed, who is of Native-American descent on his father's side, that means time with his family and native tribe, as well as jumpstarting a boxing career he began after running his last cross country race at Longwood.
 
After that, Reed has set his sights high.
 
"I want to get into fish and game and be a field officer," he said. "But I want to do well enough in search and rescue to become the guy in Virginia that when someone escapes from prison or goes missing, I go after them."
 
Classic Russell.

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