At first, Paul Van Laningham followed his older brother Luke to Cooper’s cross country practices and meets.
Van Laningham’s a senior for the Jaguars now, and much of Kentucky follows him. He’s the defending boys Class 3A state champion, and if he wins the biggest-school race in November, he’ll be the first 3A boy to repeat since Greenwood’s Ryan Eaton did it from 2008-09. (Thomas Nelson graduate and Notre Dame freshman Riku Sugie won the last three 2A races.)
“Yeah, it doesn’t feel like that long ago before I was going to practice with my brother and just hanging around the team and going to spaghetti dinners and stuff,” Paul said.
Van Laningham is national-good, too – he placed 33rd of 198 runners at the Nike Cross Nationals last December in Portland, Oregon. He’s off to a good start this season – his time of 15:09.50 at Saturday’s Moeller Primetime Invitational in Mason, Ohio is the fastest in Kentucky so far.
“I’m really just so happy and impressed that he’s stayed pretty humble this whole time, ’cause it’d be easy for him to get a big head for how much has happened the last year,” Paul’s dad and Cooper cross country coach Eric Van Laningham said.
Paul, 17, is the third of Eric and Michele Van Laningham’s four children. (Cecilia is 24, Luke is 22 and Alice is 8.) The Boone County graduates know something about state championships – Michele has seven track titles (three in the 1,600 and four in the 3,200) and two cross-country wins (1990 and 1992), and Eric has a cross country win in 1990 and two in the 3,200.
So what do Eric and Michele contribute besides championship pedigrees?
“He’s obviously got Eric’s legs, the long stride and the length of the legs,” Michele said. “I mean, he’s competitive like both of us. Paul is the smartest runner of anybody I’ve seen. He’s smarter than Eric and I ever were, as far as just strategizing.”
Like his parents, Paul Van Laningham has been successful on the track – he won the 3A state indoor 1,600 meters in March, the outdoor 1,600 in May and was second in the 3,000 at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in June in Eugene, Oregon.
“Right after the state (outdoor) meet I was not burnt out, but not feeling myself,” Paul said after the Eugene race.
But Paul considers himself a cross country runner first.
“I prefer cross-country, so yeah, I would consider myself probably a better cross-country runner, too, just ‘cause there’s not a 5K in track for high school,” he said. “… I like the cross country better, just running on the grass.”
Kindergarten races
It wasn’t hard for Eric and Michele Van Laningham to sell Paul on running; Eric’s earliest memory was some 12 years ago.
“I do remember running with him when he was very little, but not the very first time, though,” Eric said. “He was on the Boone County Jags team. I think he ran a race in kindergarten, but he didn’t run a whole lot that year. We were trying to be patient with him.”
It didn’t take Eric long to realize Paul could go places.
“He was always good for his age,” Eric said. “I think probably around, I want to say, second or third grade, he was competing pretty highly, and you could tell he was really competitive. I guess the thing that kind of excited me, that I thought he’d be pretty good (at) was, he was really small and still competing with kids bigger than him. And he was kind of a late-bloomer developmentally-wise, but he was still competing really well with them.”
What you notice first about Paul Van Laningham is his laidback demeanor and an ability to enjoy the moment – personality traits he gets from Eric.
“And even before races, I’m trying not to be super-nervous or anything,” Paul said. “I wouldn’t consider myself always laid back. Sometimes I get a little stressed out and then kind of have to calm myself down or just kind of do something fun instead, and I probably get that from my mom more so.”
Paul stands about 5-foot-7 now. He’s not sure there’s an advantage when there are hills to conquer. “Maybe it’s a mental thing,” he said.
England Idlewild Park in Burlington is one of Paul Van Laningham’s favorite courses; he won the Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference Division I title there two years ago.
“We ran in the front part of Idlewild,” he said. “You go up, it’s like a two-loop course, and you go up that big hill by the disc golf course twice. I just really liked the hill, could really kind of break people on the hill. I think the hilly courses are hard, but I do better on them and I enjoy them.”
A hard start followed by control
Paul Van Laningham thought he was the fittest of 291 runners at the Kentucky Horse Park last fall. His strategy was to go out hard the first 800 meters, string out the pace, let others lead for a while and not let the finish come down to a late kick.
“But it felt like I was controlling the thing most of the way, even if I wasn’t in the lead the whole time,” he said. “If I was in third, I was controlling it from third because I kind of felt really good. I felt like I was just in control of myself and in control of the race.”
It was a perfect plan. Van Laningham beat Louisville Trinity’s Eli Oetken by just over eight seconds.
Paul Van Laningham hasn’t picked a college yet; he won’t be going to Marquette (Eric’s alma mater) or Tennessee-Chattanooga (Michele’s), but Notre Dame has offered a scholarship.
“Ever since he qualified for nationals in cross country in November, he’s been on the phone with coaches very often, like four or five nights a week,” Eric said.
What is certain: Paul Van Laningham enjoys running regardless of terrain or surface.
“When I come around, feeling good, with a smile on my face, it’s never gone wrong,” he said after the Eugene race. “It’s never led me down a bad path.”