Alan attempting to beat brothers' records
April 25, 2007 The tossup question to McNeese State distance runner Alan Foolkes was, "which would you rather do, win a conference medal or beat brother Jason's best time in the 10,000 meter run?" "How about both," he said recently when talking about the brother Foolkes, three mainstays in the distance running category for McNeese State for the past 15 years. Pressed for one or the other, Alan said, "I really would love to have the family record. That's something we can talk about when we're old men." Alan is the last of the Foolkes brothers of Cork, Ireland and all of them have earned their page in the McNeese track and field book. Trevor, the oldest, performed for the Cowboys from 1993 to 1996 and he's now serving as a teacher and the coach of the LaGrange High girls track and field team which won the state title last year while he was named the state's all-class coach of the year. Jason is the middle Foolkes and his four years with the Cowboys ran from 1998 to 2001. He's also a coach and teacher, serving as a teacher at a middle school in Iowa and as coach of the Iowa High girls track and field team. Alan is in his final year of collegiate competition, having come on board in 2003. He redshirted last year after injuring his leg in the indoor season and competes this year as a graduate student working on his MBA. Alan and Jason go for the longer distances. Trevor was a shorter distance racer. It's Jason's standard in the 10,000 meters that Alan is after. He thought he had it a couple of weeks ago at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, CA. "You should have seen him jump when he found out his time in the race," Cowboy assistant coach Brendon Gilroy said. Alan posted his career best of 31:06.99 and thought he had beaten Jason's mark. He found out later that it was still a few tenths of a second off the 31:06.33 that Jason had posted in 2001. It was the fifth fastest in McNeese history and Alan plans to make it the fourth fastest next week at the Southland Conference championship. While they never squared off against each other in races, either in high school or college, the challenge is there. Alan said that he did break one of the brothers mark in high school. "It was the 2000 meter steeplechase and Trevor and Jason had the same mark. I don't remember what I ran but I know that it was a second faster," he recalled. Getting all three into a race now will probably never happen. "Maybe between Alan and Jason," said Trevor who admits that teaching and coaching plus raising four kids doesn't leave him much personal training time. "Besides, Jason and Alan are better at running the 10K while I think that I had the faster time in the 3K and the 1500 meters." Jason is looking for the day Alan finishes his collegiate career. "I'm looking forward to training with him. This will give me someone to run with. Right now it's hard because of our scheduling. We've talked about it and we would like to begin training to run the Houston marathon," he said. The only race that Alan is looking forward to right now, though, is the 10,000 meters at next week's SLC meet. He knows that he'll be going up against one of the best distance runners in the nation in Shadrack Songok of TAM-Corpus Christi who has posted a 28:16.47 this season. First place for Songok is a given. Alan is looking at the other medal positions and a clocking just one second faster than the mark brother Jason put into the McNeese books six years ago.
