Big Bear senior Hall wins Mt. SAC Invitational

	Chad Hall was named SI.com's Primetime Performer after topping a talented field to win the Mt. SAC Invitational. Photo courtesy of Susie Hall

Each week SI.com will select the athlete who displays excellence on and off the field as the Primetime Performer.

Chad Hall, 5-9, 130, Sr., Big Bear (Calif.) High

Big Bear's Chad Hall defeated a star-studded field to win the Super Sweepstakes division of the nation's largest cross country meet -- the 59th Mt. SAC Invitational -- last Saturday in Walnut, Calif. The win makes him the favorite to win this year's Foot Locker national championship.

Hall navigated the 2.91-mile course in 80-degree heat in 14 minutes, 35 seconds, edging Michael Cybulski of team champion Royal (Simi Valley, Calif.) by 10 seconds. Highly touted Matt Tebo of Eldorado (Albuquerque, N.M.) took third place in 14:54. Overall, there were 96 races and nearly 14,000 participants in the two-day event.

"There were two heavy hitters in the field and he really rose to the challenge," Rich Gonzalez, a national expert on high school cross country, said of Hall. "I think he proved something."

"I was excited to get to race those guys," said Hall. "I knew it was going to be a close race. Cybulski was catching me on the backstretch of the last mile, but I was just able to hold him off. It was definitely a good confidence builder. I already had raced against [and beaten] Cybulski once this year, but he's definitely improved a lot."

Hall's only loss this season has been to junior teammate Alberto Solis. "We were just taking it easy and running side by side and he won by less than a second," Hall said.

The Big Bear star comes from a stable of distance runners. Hall's father, Mickey, who is also his coach, has run triathlons for years and his older brother, Ryan, is a former national cross-country and 20K road-race champion. Chad calls Ryan -- who still holds the California state meet record for 1,600 meters -- his idol. Mickey says it's incredible how similar the two have been at identical ages.

Chad grew up watching his father and brother, so it was only natural that as a sixth grader he would ask to run a mile on the track. Mickey, knowing his son had not trained for such an event, let him take a crack at it. "He nearly passed out," Mickey recalled. "He couldn't get his breath and nearly fell down. I remember thinking he'll never do that again."

It took three more years for Chad to get serious about running. Basketball had been his only sport since elementary school.

"Starting ninth grade my dad kind of forced me to run cross country (as conditioning for basketball)," he said. "But once I got started, I liked it."

In his first race, Hall broke the freshman course record (16:28). "I was surprised," he said. "I didn't even know what the record was. I had no idea how good I'd be. I won my second race, too, and I knew I wasn't going to play any more basketball."

As a sophomore and junior he was Division IV state runner-up. In track, his biggest achievement has been winning the Southern Section all-comers Master's 1,600 meters in 4:10. Hall runs 80 to 95 miles per week in season and 90 to 100 during the summer. He does not run on Sundays and also takes a couple weeks off at the end of both cross-country and track seasons. Hall is more of a flat-course runner and is at his best in cooler weather.

Hall has a 4.0 GPA and says physics is his favorite course. He still is in the process of deciding which colleges to visit.

"He was pretty immature and physically young," says Mickey Hall. " Now he is growing into his body. He is going to get better and better. We don't have to hurry it in high school. We've just got to be patient. We believe that down the road Chad is going to have a long career."