By KEVIN CALLAHAN
Courier-Post Staff
HOLMDEL

The Cherokee High School boys' cross country team strung a banner Monday on a tree across from the Evesham school that reads: "CHS - Why not us?"

The Chiefs didn't have to ask permission to borrow the slogan from Red Sox's faithful, but not all sports stories enjoy happy endings like the one in Boston.

Sports is often about Willis Reed limping out to lift the Knicks over the Lakers or Kirk Gibson hitting a walk-off homer for the Dodgers in the Series.

But heroic endings don't have to be happy.

The finish at the Group 4 state cross country championships for Cherokee senior Sean McLaughlin certainly wasn't happy. The Chiefs took third Saturday at Holmdel State Park in a meet they hoped to win.

Hopefully, McLaughlin and his teammates can focus on the beginning of the race on this chilly morning and not the end, because the beginning was heroic. That's when McLaughlin stepped to the starting line.

Actually, McLaughlin limped to the starting line, wearing a black brace on his badly sprained left ankle. Unfortunately, the brace couldn't support his weight well enough to allow him to run in front of the pack - possibly in the top five with Cherokee teammate Tom Yersak, who finished third in 16:22. That's where McLaughlin belonged. Instead, he was No. 113 in 18:20.

Not only couldn't the brace support McLaughlin's ankle, it couldn't support his disappointment at not being able to help the Chiefs, No. 1 in the Courier-Post Top 20, win their fifth Group 4 title in the last eight years and first since 2000.

"I hope I can be proud of it, but right now it is just hard to talk about it," McLaughlin said, when asked if he could ever be proud of his effort. "I know I'm hurt, but I feel like I let down the team."

The brace couldn't help hold McLaughlin's head high, where it should've been, either.

But McLaughlin's parents helped him out there.

After the race, he placed his arm on the shoulder of his dad, Joe, who was wearing a blue baseball cap with a green shamrock, which had no luck in it. His mother, Norah, pitched in with a shoulder, too.

McLaughlin needed all the support he could find.

"We thought about this for four years, and it kind of slipped out of our hands, I guess," McLaughlin said with his eyes watering up.

McLaughlin limped the 100 or so yards back to the bright orange Cherokee tent by himself. There, he sat on a water bucket alone, with his gray sweatshirt on and its hood over his head.

"I tried to do what I could for the team. I know that is what it is about," he said, "but if I could've only done something . . . I don't know, I guess it wasn't in the cards."

McLaughlin turned his left ankle just over a week ago when he stepped on someone's ankle. The freak injury, which occurred at the end of the summer, caused him to miss sectionals last week.

"He's had to go through injuries his whole career," Cherokee coach Steve Shaklee said. "I was hoping this season he would get a break - he was really prepared for this season and was in the best shape of his life."

Instead, trying to run through the ankle injury caused some Achilles' tendinitis, which forced McLaughlin to shut down for a few weeks.

"We thought he was getting back to his old self, and then he hurt his ankle again," Shaklee said. "To his credit, he did not give up."

Cherokee seems to have a lineup full of courageous runners.

Matt Dolan ran so hard that he passed out on the course. He was hospitalized as a precaution, but, according to Shaklee, he was all right.

"He just overextended," Shaklee said of Dolan. "He probably went out a little too hard."

And that's exactly how McLaughlin went out, despite running on one leg.

"It just seemed things were working against us this year," he said. "I don't like to make excuses, and I guess you can say that everyone has problems. I guess it just wasn't our day."

McLaughlin's spirit, however, began to bounce back despite the still-throbbing ankle. He began to look forward to Saturday's Meet of Champions here, and he was hoping to beat Old Bridge and Toms River North, which finished first and second in Group 4, and a host of other championship teams.

"I'll definitely be back next week to try and accomplish something we've been thinking about for four years. I know people probably think it is impossible," McLaughlin said of winning the Meet of Champions. "Any logical person would think that, but anyone on our team won't think that way."

After his last high school meet, McLaughlin plans to continue running in college.

"I haven't exactly had a meet to show colleges," McLaughlin said, referring to his times. He added that he didn't feel his times were "worthy to be looked at by colleges."

But all great coaches know some things, more important than times, just can't be measured - and McLaughlin showed all the right stuff by running hurt and reacting to disappointment with class and determination.

So, unless a college coach spots the intangible toughness of McLaughlin, he will try out somewhere as a walk-on. One lucky coach out there will get him.

This is when McLaughlin politely and almost apologetically said, to end the interview: "I'm sorry, but if you don't mind, I'm going to go for a run."

The only thing McLaughlin lost was a race. He already proved to be a winner by just limping to the starting line.

Then, despite the pain in his ankle and the one in his heart, he showed he was a champion by still going on his cool-down run after the most disappointing race of his life.