Running the gauntlet: Sophomore Nick Winsor has overcome injuries and is already one of the top runners on the West Forsyth boys cross-country team
Published 12:00 am Thursday, October 10, 2024
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By Jay Spivey
For the Clemmons Courier
Nick Winsor is a sophomore on the West Forsyth boys cross-country team, and he’s come from being mostly an unknown to one of the best runners on the team in a relatively short period.
Much of that could be attributed to the fact that he went to Redeemer School from kindergarten through eighth grade for the Christian education and smaller class size before enrolling at West Forsyth for his freshman year last year. And some of it may be that he has a fraternal twin named Noah, who also runs on the team and helps push him.
Whatever the reason, Nick Winsor has made a name for himself. But running wasn’t his first love. He didn’t even start running until middle school.
“I did soccer, basketball and flag football,” Nick Winsor said. “(Running) wasn’t really my pure focus. But I just did it as kind of a side sport at the time.”
It all changed for him as he came closer to enrolling as a freshman at West Forsyth.
“At West, I kind of didn’t really feel like I wanted to try out for like basketball because I thought it was too competitive,” he said. “So, I just decided to stick with running because I felt like I had a better chance at being successful in it.”
Nick Winsor started preparing to run on the cross-country team at West Forsyth in the summer of 2023, and he wasn’t able to run in eighth grade at Redeemer. But there was a good reason for it.
“I broke my arm,” he said. “I broke my arm. I think it was August (of 2022), so I wasn’t able to compete.”
According to Nick Winsor, his doctors didn’t want him to run or play soccer with a broken arm. So, when he went out for the cross-country team at West Forsyth neither he nor Coach Nathan Newsome of West Forsyth knew each other.
“He didn’t really know much about my times from middle school because I didn’t run eighth-grade year,” Nick Winsor said. “So, he just wanted to see like how much potential I had.”
Despite picking up running relatively late, it can be a wait-and-see process.
“I think a lot of kids, you know, kind of, it’s not like Little League baseball or soccer or football or whatever. They don’t really get exposed to it, especially on the distance level,” Newsome said. “I’ll get sprinters and jumpers that do AAU. I think it’s a much more popular type of an event, quite honestly.
“I think there’s a lot of those kids that don’t do a whole lot of prep work. They just pop out there and run the 100(-meter). You know, it is what it is. You do what you can do. But distance runner is a little more of a different animal.”
Newsome has had plenty of experience with developing green runners into seasoned runners.
“When we get those kids that come, I would say with most middle schoolers, and I don’t really know if private school, I would differentiate from or not,” Newsome said. “But most middle schoolers, unless I happen to know some back story, they usually come to us with a very abbreviated training regimen. They’re not used to running a whole lot.”
That was certainly the case with Nick Winsor after having not run in about a year after breaking his arm in eighth-grade.
“It was kind of tough, but being like an athletic person, it didn’t take that long to get used to it,” Nick Winsor said.
Nick Winsor said he ran most of the summer of 2023 to get his strength and conditioning back to prepare to run in high school.
According to Athletic.net, Nick Winsor ran Friday Night Lights last year, which was one of the first big 5-K (3.2 miles) events of his freshman year, he ran 18:52.1.
“A lot of times, kids don’t know what they’re good at until they, you know, until they have a chance, you know, for it to kind of occur,” Newsome said. “So, as the season progressed last year, and we try to ease them into it so they get overuse injury. But it’s a fine rope to walk, so to speak.”
It was a slow process, but Nick Winsor progressed last season as a freshman.
“You know, I remember him getting better, and him starting to show some flashes of improvement,” Newsome said.
In his first race last year as a freshman on Aug. 19, Nick Winsor ran in the Highway 24 Light up Night, which is a 3K. According to Athletic.net, he ran 12:02.0.
“He finally comes back and doesn’t do a whole lot of mileage (after breaking his arm). You know, he hadn’t done a whole lot,” Newsome said. “And we go to the first race and he’s feraking amazing. It was like, ‘Holy moley.’”
Nick Winsor continued to improve. Again, according to Athletic.net, he ran in the adidas XC Invitational in Cary last year just eight days after Friday Night Lights, and finished at 18:33.3.
He even improved upon that time. On Oct. 7 of last year at the Wendy’s Invitational at McAlpine Park in Charlotte, he ran 18:26.7.
“I wasn’t that pleased,” Nick Winsor said. “I thought I had a lot more potential, but I just hadn’t unlocked it yet. I felt like I was pretty mediocre. It was just like an average time I would say.”
And don’t forget, one of the driving forces for Nick Winsor was his twin brother.
“We’re definitely competitive,” Nick Winsor said.
Although not identical twins, Nick Winsor said they’re close.
“We have the same friend group, so we’re around each other a lot,” Nick Winsor said. “It’s fine. It’s convenient, just having someone I know to be around.”
Noah Winsor was born two minutes before Nick. There is also a 10-year-old brother named Luke and a 13-year-old sister named Kate, who are both students at Redeemer.
“It definitely brings out my competitive side,” Nick Winsor said. “I’d say I’m pretty competitive, always wanting to one-up someone. It definitely goes both ways with being able to push each other and bring out the best in us.”
It didn’t really help the end of last season. According to Newsome, Nick Winsor had a calf injury, which may have contributed his finishing 18:58.6 in last year’s NCHSAA Class 4-A Midwest Regional at Ivey M. Redmon Sports Complex in Kernersville.
Nick Winsor, who runs indoor and outdoor track and field for the Titans, unfortunately, broke the same arm again in a biking accident this past July.
“I did miss seven weeks of summer training,” he said.
Once he came back in August, Nick Winsor had to improve his strength and endurance.
“I missed a lot of summer training,” he said. “I was not (running) until the last two weeks of having the cast on. I could do like low-intensity training just to get back into it.”
According to Athletic.net, he ran Aug. 28 in the Norman Trzaskoma Invitational, which is the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools city-county meet. That race was 3,200 meters and Nick Winsor finished 17:07.0. On Sept. 4, he ran in a Central Piedmont 4-A meet, which was a 5K, and he finished 20:28.3. Two days later at Friday Night Lights, he finished 17:34.3.
“(He’s improved) significantly,” Newsome said. “Almost to the point where you might have a little bit of that impostor syndrome, you know, ‘I’m not used to finishing second on the team, you know, or being the best that we’ve got.’
“So, he’s kind of be been thrust into that role. So, I’m curious to see what the byproduct of that is – if the confidence will follow or if it will continue to just be this utter surprise every week.”
He’s continued to run on the team with Noah. Noah ran 18:04.20 in Friday Night Lights. Also, on Sept. 21 at the adidas XC challenge in Cary, Nick finished 16:50.7, which was a personal record, and Noah finished 17:51.30, which was also a PR.
This past Saturday at the Wendy’s Invitational in Cary, Nick Winsor finished 16:58.
“He’s almost 2 full minutes faster,” Newsome said. “I mean, that’s crazy. If my No. 1 girl was 2 minutes this year than last year, she’d be the state champion. You know, so it’s that big of a jump.
There is still the Central Piedmont 4-A conference meet at Ivey M. Redmon Sports Complex, the NCHSAA Class 4-A Midwest Regional on Oct. 26 at Ivey M. Redmon, and the NCHSAA Class 4-A state championship is Nov. 2, also at Ivey M. Redmon.
According to Newsome, Nick Winsor can be one of the best runners in West Forsyth school history.
“We have such little data on him,” Newsome said. “You know, that’s just going off of, I’m basing that off the fact that he just doesn’t have a whole lot of experience, and he’s already run 16:50.”
Nick Winsor still has two more full seasons of cross-country, plus three seasons of indoor and outdoor track and field before he graduates from West Forsyth. However, his stated goal is to break the school record in the 5K, which was set by Wesley Haggstrom, who is running cross-country and track and field at Charleston Southern, with a time of 15:34.
“I think I can definitely go sub-16 minutes and get as close as I can to the school record,” Nick Winsor said.
Newsome agrees that that is possible.
“If I was a betting man, I would bet that he’s going to be pretty dang good,” he said. “I know it’s awkward to say, but I’m not so sure his brother’s not going to be equally as good.”