The Ramon Way: Arlington runner wins state title

ARLINGTON — When Ramon Little crossed the finish line at the WIAA State Cross Country Championships at Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco on Nov. 8, he was not happy.

His mind focused on the negatives. He felt he could have run better.

It wasn’t until a few moments later that the Arlington junior realized he had just won the state championship. It took even longer for him to process exactly what he had just accomplished. Not only did Little become Arlington’s first state champion in program history, he set a course record in the process.

It was as if the Seattle Seahawks’ ‘Legion of Boom’ had harped on allowing eight points instead of zero in their 43-8 win over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.

“I don’t really know why (I felt like that), because I ran fast,” Little said, reflecting on the moment at the Eagles’ team banquet at Arlington High School on Tuesday. “… I felt like my reaction time was just like, really slow for some reason coming after that. I don’t know if it’s maybe because I was tired or something, but I don’t know. It just didn’t hit me super hard like maybe it should have.”

Those who know Little best would say that’s who he is. Always moving. Always working towards the next thing. Always humble, sometimes to a fault.

Outside of running, Little is a third-degree black belt in taekwondo. He is a competitive cyclist, and he enjoys snowboarding and wakeboarding among a litany of other outdoor activities. Even when he’s not outside, he finds a way to keep his mind there, studying maps and talking baseball.

Teammates know Little as a hard worker, but also as someone with a great sense of humor. Someone with razor-sharp focus on his own progression, but also a selfless teammate who wants to see his friends succeed. Someone who tends to order the ‘Caspian’ when the team goes to MOD Pizza on the Friday nights before Saturday races, a sacred Arlington cross country tradition.

That’s who Little is.

He is also an amputee, with his state title in the ambulatory race with a state-record time of 12 minutes, 29.2 seconds on the 2.1-mile course in Pasco.

‘The Ramon Way’

Little was born with tibial hemimelia in his right leg, a rare congenital condition where the lower portion of his tibia didn’t grow in. His knee was intact and he had a fully formed foot, but his ankle-area was unstable due to the condition.

Little’s parents, Richard and Monika Little, faced a difficult decision of either keeping the leg and putting Ramon through a series of bone-lengthening surgeries until he was done growing, or amputation. Ultimately, they opted for the latter, rationalizing that even if he still had his foot, it would not be very effective for an active lifestyle.

At around a year old, Little underwent the amputation procedure, and he was fitted for his first prosthetic a few months later following the healing process. According to Richard, Ramon was up and walking not long after.

“It was a difficult proposition to think about going through that process with your child,” Richard said. “But it was easy because we knew the long-term results that we wanted for him.”

It created an entirely new world for the Littles. There are regular prosthetic fittings as Little outgrows previous ones, and annual visits to Seattle Children’s Hospital. The family constantly brainstorms ways to adapt to “this symmetrical world,” as Monika put it — they tried (unsuccessfully) to zip tie his prosthetic to the bicycle when he was first learning to ride, for example — but through all the difficulties, Little’s family focused on making his life as limitless as possible.

“What looks to us as abnormal, that’s his normal,” Monika said. “So we just kind of say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do it the Ramon Way,’ and it keeps us open-minded to learning things in different ways.”

In some ways, it was simple. The Littles are an athletic family, so for his whole childhood, Ramon almost had no choice but to keep up. Among other sports, Richard played football, Monika was a gymnast, and Ramon’s sister, Maya, now plays rugby at Western Washington University.

Following the lead of his active family, Little excelled in his development. He was riding a bike at three — after finding a more effective way than with the zip ties — and snowboarding at five. That said, his parents never pushed him into anything. Little had full agency to pursue whatever he wanted.

“If he wanted to try something, we were game to let him try it,” Richard said. “We had the mindset that his condition wasn’t going to be what was holding him back, so just kind of instilling that growth mindset.”

Evidently, that process was overwhelmingly successful, but not without its frustrations. Little would routinely break the carbon-fiber feet on his prosthetic, which would keep him “out of commission” for weeks at a time as he waited for replacement parts, or sometimes an entire replacement leg. To this day, he deals with blisters around the area where his leg fits into the prosthetic.

Little makes it look easy. It isn’t.

“He shows the struggle at home with us,” Monika said. “But out in the world, he’s just doing his business and staying humble. We kind of keep it in the household of all the struggles he would have, and we try to work at it as best we can.”

The Reason for Running

Little credits his family’s support and their growth mindset for his success, and he gravitated towards running as one of his main sports because of how it challenges him and pushes him to the best of his abilities.

“I feel running is a pretty easy sport to know how to measure that,” Little said. “To see if I put my best effort or (if) I didn’t have my best race, and so I just always can get new PRs (personal records), and so that’s really cool.”

Arlington co-head coach Mike Shierk, who coaches middle school track in the spring, remembers watching Little compete in the mile even before he reached high school. Shierk admired how Little put himself out there despite his differences and all the self-consciousness that may come with that, especially as a middle schooler.

Once Little joined the Eagles cross country team and Shierk learned more about him, that admiration only grew.

Shierk and co-coach Jon Murray had never trained an ambulatory athlete before Little, but it was a smooth transition. Little follows the same type of training plans as any other athlete on the roster, routinely running 55 miles per week, with 12-mile long runs at a seven-minute pace.

“He was no different than any of the other kids in his training,” Shierk said. “Where he just has total buy-in for what we’re doing, is extremely coachable, highly competitive in every one of the races, and his times are continuing to drop throughout the season.”

However, Little stands out in one particular way. Not just compared to his teammates, but to all of the elite runners that passed through Arlington’s program.

“He’s the kid that never complains,” Murray said. “We’ll have kids on the team that complain about a simple blister, and he’ll have lots of blisters on his leg where his (prosthetic) attaches, and you never hear a word.”

In fact, the coaches usually go out of their way to make sure Little isn’t pushing himself too hard. It’s a quality that earned him the respect of his teammates.

“He definitely is the definition of grit,” Arlington teammate Caden Mace said. “Every time I talk to him, I’m enlightened, and it always puts a smile on my face. Really, I am so motivated and inspired by watching him and all the hard stuff he’s had to go through to get where he is today.”

That hard work paid off in Little’s freshman season, when he finished third in the ambulatory state championship. He followed that up with a second-place finish as a sophomore. Still, Little had higher aspirations, and he would be put in a better position to achieve them entering his sophomore track season.

Blade Runner

During the fall of Little’s sophomore cross country season, Richard Little applied for an athletic foot grant on Ramon’s behalf following a recommendation from the doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The Challenged Athletes Foundation partnered with Ossur, an Iceland-based company that develops and manufactures “non-invasive” orthopedic equipment, to provide grants for athletes at any level “with permanent physical disabilities that impair mobility, neuromuscular function, balance, or motor control,” according to the CAF website.

Richard submitted the application with no expectation for Ramon to qualify, but within a couple of weeks, the Littles heard back with the news that Ramon would receive a specific athletic-use running blade. It would not be ready in time for Ramon to use during the cross country season, but he received it a couple of months ahead of outdoor track.

His whole life, Ramon would run with his daily-use prosthetic, routinely pushing it past its limit and breaking it. Richard remembers calling Seattle Children’s in a panic in the middle of the night when Ramon first broke his prosthetic at just 16 months old.

“He wasn’t even two years old yet,” Richard said. “He’s been doing that ever since.”

Not only would this running blade allow Little to preserve his daily prosthetic, but it would dramatically improve his athletic performance.

The able-bodied human leg can return up to 240 percent of the stored energy created by a runner’s stride, according to a 2014 study published in Sports journal. Little’s new blade returns 70-80 percent of the stored energy, compared to the zero-percent return in his daily prosthetic.

The blade doesn’t replicate the human body, but it certainly helps level the playing field.

At first, Little was scared of the blade. Accustomed to planting with his daily-use prosthetic, Little said it felt like “stepping into a hole” with the blade because its mechanism provides more give than he was used to, and he felt overwhelmed by the amount of energy it gave back every time he pushed off.

Little says he’s still getting used to it in a lot of areas, but he figured out how to run effectively in 5k races.

“I just adapted, basically like I did the whole rest of my life,” Little said. “So (my) first reaction was kind of scared, but then after that it was really cool and helped me improve so much during that track season.”

The State Championship

Throughout this past cross country season as a junior, Little dropped his times significantly from the previous year. After consistently running between 20-21 minutes in the 5k as a sophomore, Little ran 19:20.1 at the South Whidbey Carl Westling Invitational on Sept. 20 before breaking the 19-minute threshold with an 18:18.3 run at the Nike Hole in the Wall Invitational on Oct. 11.

Able to reach his potential with the help of his running blade, Little quickly asserted himself as a key contributor and vocal leader for the Eagles.

“As with anyone coming into the team, there’s a little element of nervousness as you’re seeing a bunch of new faces and stuff,” Arlington teammate Pierce Parsons said. “But he’s definitely grown as being a core centerpiece of the team and finding his niche.”

But when it came down to the state race and his quest to win the championship this time around, Little couldn’t stick to his typical 5k race strategy. He needed to make an adjustment in order to win on a shorter course. Little determined he had to go out faster and just keep pressing if he started to burn out towards the end.

“I was thinking he was going to try to burn the legs out of anybody that tried to stick with him,” Murray said. “But in his head, it was just like, ‘Hey, it’s short. Even if I go out hard and I don’t feel good after that first mile, it’s over before I know it.’ So I really am proud of him for coming up with that race strategy on his own. That was his, and it really worked out for him.”

It helped that the state unified race happened at the same time. Max Grennell, one of Stanwood’s partner runners, ranked in the top 10 on the Spartans’ varsity team, and while Little was not competing against him, Grennell almost served as a pseudo-pacer to help Little get out to the fast start he wanted without having to be in ‘no man’s land.’

Little passed the first mile at 5:33 — just a year after his mile PR on the track was 5:56 — and he continued pushing down the stretch. He fought for every second of his record time. Shierk recalled watching Little’s face contort as he pushed himself into the finish, “getting ugly,” as the Eagles program likes to call it. His record 12:29.2 finish was nearly an entire minute faster than his second-place time from last season (13:20.2).

By the time Little took his place on the top spot of the podium, those negative thoughts from crossing the finish line had faded.

“That really hit me,” Little said. “Like, ‘Oh, I’m on the number one (spot). That’s really good.’”

More Hardware

Little’s season did not end in Pasco. Racing alongside his Arlington teammates, Little set a new 5k personal record at Nike Cross Northwest Regionals in Spokane with an 18:03.9 finish on Nov. 15. He tied for 81st in a field of 582 in the Boys Rising Stars race. It was nearly a 90-second improvement from his NXR time last year (20:31.1).

He added a couple more honors at Arlington’s banquet on Tuesday, where it was announced that teammates voted him ‘Most Inspirational’ and that coaches selected him for the prestigious Harrier Award, given to the athlete that “reflects outstanding athleticism, commitment, coachability, hard work, dedication, leadership, (and) integrity,” according to assistant coach Krissy Kolbeck.

The Harrier Award typically goes to a senior, but the coaching staff felt there was no better choice than Little.

“Ramon is one of the most tenacious young men I think I’ve ever met,” Kolbeck said when highlighting Little during the banquet’s proceedings. “He’s got more grit than anybody I think I’ve ever met, and his integrity is incredible. Along with those three things, he’s also just kind and sweet, and interesting and well-rounded.”

Just as she did watching Ramon step up to the podium at the state championship, Monika started to tear up listening to all the kind words shared about her son.

“He’s said plenty of times, ‘You don’t understand what it’s like,’ and I don’t,” Monika said. “But I’m just trying my best as a parent to raise an amputee just to be the best that he can, so just being that support, and he inspires us.”

Heading into track season, Little will shift his focus onto short-distance and throwing events, mainly because long-distance ambulatory events are not offered at the state level, which is something Little would like to see changed in the future. He would also like to see the state ambulatory cross country championship race extended to the standard 5k.

At the same time, if given the option between competing in an ambulatory or a varsity race, Little would choose the latter. He doesn’t shy away from his amputation — Richard joked that if Ramon could wear shorts 24/7, he would — but he also doesn’t want to be treated differently.

Come next fall, Little hopes to crack the Eagles’ varsity top nine that travels to state. According to Murray, Little hovered between the No. 12-14 spot this season, and he will have a realistic shot to compete for a top nine spot with a few seniors graduating. If not, Murray said Little will come back to defend his ambulatory title “with a vengeance.”

No matter where he ends up racing, the awards Little received on Tuesday affirmed to him that he is a valuable part of the team.

That’s all he ever wanted.

“I think that’s really cool, because I never really thought about it,” Little said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I have one leg. They think I’m cool.’ But I never thought they (believed) I was on that level. … I just really appreciate it a lot.”