Notre Dame Prep cross country team rallies around runner with vision impairment

NILES, Ill. (CBS) — The junior varsity cross country team at Notre Dame College Prep finished its season over the weekend, placing third at a conference meet, but the end of every race is special for Owen McBride, who runs despite a vision impairment.
This year’s Notre Dame cross country team is unlike any that’s come before.
“We actually have the biggest team in school history, which is something definitely to be proud of,” said head coach Braulio Alvarez.
Among the 35 combined members of the close-knit junior varsity and varsity teams is McBride, a junior, who fell in love with running as a freshman.
“We’re all friends,” McBride said. “We joke around together. We have fun.”
Alvarez described McBride as “very disciplined, comes to practice every day, and that’s honestly half the battle. It says a lot that you consistently show up on a daily basis.”
McBride is no stranger to hard work and discipline, having to run miles at a time, but he also perseveres in his daily life.
“I think they call it lazy eye,” McBride said. “My right eye shuts, and so … I can’t see very far. I need help knowing the turns, like a stick on the ground I might trip on. I’ll need help seeing that.”
A few members of the varsity team didn’t hesitate to step in.
“Two of our senior leaders who happen to be our two team captains for the season will run with him, they’ll each take a mile, and then we have a young sophomore leader as well who has stepped up into that role,” Alvarez said. “They’ll run their three-mile race. They’ll cool down, or they’ll treat running with Owen as their cool down.”
Teammate Henry Thuet said McBride “makes the team better.”
“I think him being here, him doing it, it’s inspiring for me,” Thuet said. “It’s inspiring for everybody.”
It turns out the time McBride and his teammates have spent together has helped him in more ways than just one.
“He’s improved a ton,” Thuet said. “I was telling him the other day when we did a race, he had a great finish in one of the races, one of the best finishes I’ve ever seen out of him. Improvement, improvement, improvement, running is all about that.”
For the team, running is also about supporting one another from the start to the finish line.
“It really does kind of warm your heart a little bit, even if you know nothing about cross country or athletics,” Alvarez said. “Just to see a collection of people, a group of people kind of rallying around each other. Being there for one another, encouraging one another during the race and they all kind of step up and do their part on their own.”
Notre Dame’s varsity cross country team will run at the IHSA regional in Grayslake on Saturday.