Joplin Mayor Keenan Cortez named November 8th McAuley Catholic Cross Country Day during the year’s first city council meeting. This commemorated the day the McAuley boys’ cross-country team took home the first state championship for any sport in the school’s history. The women’s also team took third in the state and first in school history.
Andy Youngworth has been the Cross-Country Coach for McAuley Cross Country since 2021.
He has been coaching a variety of sports since 1980. While he says track and field is his favorite sport to coach now, it was not always his first choice. He expected to be a football and basketball coach early in his career.
“It's the only sport where everybody does the same thing simultaneously. I realized that little less politics or fewer politics and running stopwatch really does not lie,” he said.
It was not until 1994 when he started coaching Track and Field at Carthage, that he realized his love for the sport. With advice from mentors such as MSSU Hall of Famer Patty Vavra and Joe Bill Dixon, Youngworth realized he could not pass up the opportunity.
“I knew about enough to still a thimble with my knowledge about distance runners,” he said. “So, it was a learn as I went process.”
When he started at McAuley in 2021, the school had no accurate distance running or even track and field results, according to Youngworth.
He started an off-season program in the spring of 2021. The team drove to MSSU four days a week for training camp and had excellent attendance with middle school kids.
One of the first runners he coached, Michael Parrigon, is running for MSSU this fall. The first year, there was also only one girl on the team, who ended up qualifying for state.
Youngworth wanted to build a team culture to get the team and parents committed.
Andy Youngworth has been coaching sports for nearly forty years. McAuley's state championship is the second state championship in his career.
This meant doing things like a running camp in the summer or going on an overnight trip to run on the state course at Columbia, Missouri, and Rim Rock at Kansas University.
Youngworth said he often applied his knowledge from coaching at Carthage to McAuley.
“I always thought it was important when I was at Carthage for the kids to know what it was like to run at a big meet that if you are going to run at the big meet at the end of the year state, you needed to be able to do that.,” he said.
One girl and two boys qualified for state during his first year. The second year was the first time boys and girls qualified for state.
As each year passed, it became clear to Youngworth how much the team was improving.
He also emphasized ‘starting from the bottom up’ with the middle school kids to get them to like running.
“The actual running part is not good, but it's the camaraderie. It's doing things. Doing stupid little things with each other,” he said.
The progress from 2021 to now was slow-moving, so Youngworth created realistic goals for the team. He said it was never about the end of the season but what is happening in the present.
"It was always about what we can do today to be better. Try to make the journey important, not necessarily the result. “ he said.
Youngworth was the Track and Field coach when Carthage won a state championship in 2018. At the time, he thought it was the pinnacle of his career. It's exceedingly rare for a coach to win one state trophy in their career, much less two.
While he never wants to make this win about himself, Youngworth said it's hard to explain what this championship win means to him as a coach.
But like any coach, he is still thinking about the future.
“What can we do next year? It's never resting on what you did.It all goes back to the day by day,” he said.
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