The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
My Story: A Longhorn Portrait of Connor Hendrickson
10.29.2015 | Track & Field / Cross Country
The Pan American Junior Champion and the Longhorns eye their first cross country Big 12 title.
If the sun is up, Connor Hendrickson is probably running. And he's probably running with a group of friends.
At least, that's how he thinks about running cross country for The University of Texas.
"These aren't just my teammates. They're my best friends," Hendrickson says. "That's the life I'm accustomed to. I'm going to wake up at 6:30 a.m. regardless. That's my body and my mentality."
Cross country offers a unique discipline to the track and field student-athlete. Contested in the fall, races bring all sorts of weather. And while the distances are conservative, less than 10,000 meters, the pace never is, and neither is the terrain.
Hendrickson says the word he thinks of when he imagines a cross country race is "gritty."
"Whether that be mud and dirt in your face, or someone brushes up against you and it's a mixture of sweat at blood … it's a really dirty, grimy environment," Hendrickson says. "It's not your typical race or run. You have to sacrifice more to be exceptional at the sport."
He didn't become a competitive runner until high school. At the beginning of one season, the team had to run individual time trials, and Hendrickson remembers he got destroyed.
"I was so mad and upset. That hour afterwards, I wanted to go race right then and right there and prove that I could be a good runner and a decent racer," he recalled.
Hendrickson later won a gold medal in the 10K race at the 2015 Pan American Junior Championships.
"He's a very intelligent young man, and also a good runner. He's competitive," distance coach Brad Herbster says.
Hendrickson is an architectural engineering major at The University of Texas, because he likes designing and building ideas. Ironically, he doesn't believe it's possible to plan a perfect race.
"There's no such thing as the perfect race because not everything is going to go right," he says. "The ones who are most successful are the ones who can put aside the things they can't control … the people who have the most heart, the most tenacity, who at the end of the race can push themselves past what others are willing to."
The team mentality of training and racing in cross country season appeals to Hendrickson, and this year he says the prioritized goal for the men's program is to win its first Big 12 title in cross country. Identifying that goal among his teammates pulls them through the pre-dawn hours of training and pain of racing.
"When you have a common goal, it's easy to go all in," Hendrickson says.
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