They were the most dominant cross country team Gig Harbor has ever seen. Where are they now?
They were the most successful cross country team Gig Harbor High School has ever seen — and quite possibly, the best team the state has ever seen.
The 2013 Tides team, which won the state title easily, and also captured the national title at Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) National Champion at the Portland Meadows Race Track in Portland, Oregon, took cross country in the Gig Harbor area to a different level.
The team, led by Logan Carroll, Wolfgang Beck, Tristan Peloquin and Mahmoud Moussa, was a uniquely competitive and dominant squad.
So where are they now?
Logan Carroll recently wrapped up his running career at the University of North Carolina and Wolfgang Beck completed his career at Princeton. Moussa is currently running at the University of Washington, while Peloquin is going into his senior year at Portland, which took second in the country in the NCAA Division-I championships a year ago. Peloquin will have a fifth year of eligibility after redshirting as a freshman.
The four all competed or still compete in cross country, indoor track in the winter and outdoor track in the spring.
In many ways, for the core group of four, college competition has proved to be stiffer than expected. After being the nation’s best team in high school, it was tough to go into college and not dominate right off the bat.
“I think what’s hard is that we performed so well in high school, so our expectations were sky-high for the next level,” Carroll said. “I get a little sad thinking about it. I was 12th in the country in high school and was never able to get up in the same level of performing in college. That’s difficult to have kind of peaked in high school with that performance.”
Carroll had some solid finishes in college, including taking 71st at the NCAA Southeast Regional and 64th at the ACC Cross Country Championships in 2017. He placed 10th in the 5K race at the Mt. Sac Relays in California as a sophomore. He earned All-ACC honors after placing 20th at the ACC Cross Country Championships in 2016.
Beck placed 20th in the 8,000 meters at the Princeton Cross Country Invitational in the 2017 season, with a personal record time of 24 minutes, 36.9 seconds.
Moussa has been coming on strong as of late, highlighted by a fifth-place finish at the Pac-12 championship race with a time of 23:52.0.
Peloquin has yet to make it into the team’s top seven, which he’s still working toward. He took fifth in the Santa Clara Bronco Invitational, posting a personal record time of 23:47.4 in the 8,000-meters.
The theme for the Gig Harbor grads was similar: They’ve popped up with some good times here and there, but have struggled to break through consistently at the college level.
“It’s been tough,” Peloquin said. “Coming in after high school, winning a national title my junior year, you’re an All-American in high school, you’re dominating local meets and then in college, everyone is on the same playing field, all of the sudden.
“It’s a wakeup call, for sure. Nobody really remembers what you did in high school. Instead of five elite guys, you have a couple hundred really good athletes in a race, people coming from countries all over the world to compete.”
For Carroll, if he wasn’t in the top five in any race in high school, it was a poor race, by his standards.
“In my first college race, I finished 40th and I ran really well that day,” he said. “It’s hard to feel like you’re competing super well. You’re always in the middle of the pack. Everyone in college is talented. The mental part becomes a big deal.”
Peloquin said the transition to college has been challenging, at times.
“We came from the best program in the country,” Peloquin said. “I won three state titles in four years with the team and we were head and shoulders above everyone else. You’re kind of walking superstars in the cross country world. It brought so much attention to us. It’s a hard shadow to escape from. You carry that with you. It’s hard to maintain that in college. You get a slice of humble pie.”
Still, Carroll valued his time at UNC, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Peloquin is studying nursing, and is still hopefully he will break through with the squad.
“I’m not satisfied yet,” Peloquin said. “Mahmoud and I, we’ve got a little time left. I don’t want to leave anything.”
A lasting legacy
When Carroll thinks back to December 7, 2013—the day the team won the national title in Portland—Carroll wishes he would’ve been in the moment a bit more.
“I wish I would’ve really cherished that moment more and appreciated it more,” he said.
The team had been singularly focused on winning the national title since their trainings together in the summer.
“It was just like: This is what we’re capable of, and this is what we’re doing,” Carroll said. “It was really cool to be a part of that team. We came together as a group. I’m really proud of all those guys and to go down as one of the best teams Gig Harbor has ever had. I hope that gives a chance for teams in the future and some hope. It just takes the right attitude and the right group of people.”
Peloquin remembers how much confidence the team ran with.
“We just had that mentality about us that we could beat anybody, any time, at any place,” Peloquin said.
Peloquin said he’ll never tired of walking into the Gig Harbor High School gym and seeing the giant national championship banner hanging on the wall. Whatever has transpired in their college careers, that title is something that no one can ever take away.
“It’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Peloquin said.
Mark Wieczorek — Gig Harbor’s cross country coach in 2013 — put together a video after the season, commemorating the boys’ accomplishments during that season. When Peloquin was in a rough patch last season, he watched that video the night before a big race.
“I look back on that season and I say to myself, ‘I’m still that same runner,’” Peloquin said. “I’m just trying to recapture that mentality.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 11:42 AM.