Beck Jones & William Norris: Seniors Beck Jones & William Norris will run cross country and track at Park University for the same coach, East’s Rikki Hacker

What’s the most difficult sport? A heated debate between then-juniors Beck Jones, William Norris and their friends. Jones thought, clearly not cross country. It’s a “baby sport.” All you do is run, couldn’t be that hard, right?

“Beckham, I bet you couldn’t make it through a week of cross country practice,” Norris told Jones.

So Jones took up that bet — an ego bet. Only he didn’t leave after one week.

Two years later, now-seniors Jones and Norris are both running on varsity together and preparing to move to Parkville, Missouri and compete in cross country and track for Park University, continuing to train with their high school coach — Rikki Hacker.

Hacker has coached at East for five years and just started coaching this year at Park as well.

Jones and Norris are friends when hanging out outside of practice but are teammates and competitors on the track. Norris will yell “Let’s go! Come on!” to Jones during a race and the two push one another through 300 meter repeats at practice.

“[Beck and I are] friends also outside of track,” Norris said. “So I think it’s a really big help to both of us that we have someone that we can lean on if things start going off or anything.”

At East, Hacker has prepared the boys to compete with the Park team next year, not only by introducing them to some of Park’s current runners but also through his training style. Norris and Jones are accustomed to the high mileage weeks and workouts to push lung capacity — Hacker schedules.

“[Having Hacker as a coach] gives me confidence going into next year knowing that I will succeed and that I’m not just going to be overlooked by some other coach who just wanted to get me there for my times,” Jones said.

Hacker also believes that Jones’ team spirit and Norris’ leadership abilities will help the team going into next year and is looking forward to getting to coach the two for longer as Jones has been running for two years and Norris for three.

“It’s gonna be really cool having athletes that transition from high school working with them to college working with them,” Hacker said. “That’s pretty unique and it’s hard to get that opportunity as a coach, so I’m pretty lucky.”