ECU Cross Country's Band Of Brothers

By Joe Corley
ECUPirates.com

It's a well-worn sports cliché. Teams bond together in pursuit of excellence, whether in the arena of competition or in achieving another goal, and sometimes when that success comes it's attributed to being "family."

The ECU men's cross country team is taking the family concept literally as it chases down its own excellence. In a sport in which the top five individuals comprise the team score, the Pirates have two sets of brothers leading the way in the top four spots. And those four runners, along with the rest of the tight-knit roster, have their sights set on unprecedented success.

"You can look at history and see the school record boards at ECU, and some of those numbers were from a long time ago, before we were even born," said Andrew Ciaccia, a junior from Winston-Salem who started his career at Toledo but transferred to ECU in part to run alongside his twin brother, Nick. "But now they're starting to change to 2016 and 2017, and you're going to see a lot more of that in the upcoming future."

Two days after he said that, he was proven correct. In the Paul Short Run at Lehigh on Friday, Sept. 29, Bakri Abushouk finished 14^th over the 8K course in 23:53, tying the program record for 8K set by Kyle MacKenzie 14 years ago at the N.C. Intercollegiate Division I Men's Cross Country Championships at Overton's Lake Kristi. Abushouk, a senior, transferred this year to ECU, where he joined his brother, sophomore Dean Abushouk. Bakri started his college career at N.C. State, where among other accolades he earned NCAA All-Southeast Regional honors two years ago after finishing 24^th at the regional meet.

"People know who Bakri Abushouk is, they're starting to know who Nick, Dean and Andrew are," said coach Josey Weaver, who was hired last October and has been busy since then trying to improve the quality of the ECU distance program. "When recruits look up our history and see guys dropping times like we're going to drop this year, that doesn't hurt us at all."

Nick, Dean and Andrew also ran well at the Paul Short, finishing 131^st (25:02), 160^th (25:13) and 206^th (25:30) respectively as the Pirates took 29^th in a stacked field of 40. After training hard throughout the summer and the early part of the season, it was the first time ECU truly tested itself in a meet. Each runner dropped about 90 seconds to two minutes from their times in the opener at Temple four weeks earlier.

Weaver lets his runners set their own goals each season, but he has what he calls "program goals." That includes finishing third or better in the American Athletic Conference. This year's AAC meet is Oct. 28 back at Temple. Last year, Tulsa had all of its top five finish within the top 10 individually and it easily won the championship with 22 points, 79 ahead of runner-up Tulane. ECU was seventh in a nine-team field with 143, but only 34 points behind third-place Cincinnati and well ahead of No. 8 Houston (215).

"One of our program goals is, we expect to win," Weaver said. "Tulsa is very good, and they're on top of the mountain. There's no doubt about it, when we show up at the conference meet, we want to be in the top three this year."

Coming out of R.J. Reynolds High School, Andrew Ciaccia struck out on his own at Toledo, which has a men's cross country program but no men's track and field. He soon found that limited his training, and when he saw the improvement his brother was making with the Pirates he decided to make a change after one year.

"I wasn't exactly happy with where my performances were," said Andrew, who was the Pirates' No. 3 runner at the league meet a year ago, taking 29^th overall (26:00.2). "I thought that coming back to North Carolina and being closer to home, closer to family, would really help me out academically, athletically and just life in general. The team here really welcomed me and we just started rolling from day one. Everything really came together as I expected."

"At Toledo, he wasn't having the indoor/outdoor season, and so they weren't training like that year-round," said Nick, who was ECU's fourth runner at the AAC meet a year ago, finishing 34^th (26:09.0). "We're both high-mileage guys. I guess my mileage is a little more than his, but I think part of that is just from me being at ECU a little longer."

At the NCHSAA 4A state cross country meet in 2014, Andrew Ciaccia finished fourth over the 5K course in 16:11.29, followed very closely by Cary High School's Dean Abushouk in fifth in 16:13.14 and Nick Ciaccia in sixth in 16:13.91. The three were on the same recruiting visit to ECU, and although Dean's older brother already was at N.C. State, he never swayed from his decision to become a Pirate.

"I liked the coaching staff and I liked the school," said Dean, ECU's No. 5 runner at the conference meet a year ago, finishing 53^rd (27:10.6).

Bakri didn't make the move to ECU specifically to join his brother, but it was an added bonus. He stressed that the decision was his own, motivated by other reasons.

"I came here because I thought I could be great here," said Bakri, whose older two brothers also ran in college, Mohamed at North Carolina and Assir at N.C. State. "We have great facilities and great coaches, and it's absolutely a plus to have Dean here. The whole team is a family. We're small, and it's a blessing in disguise that we're a small group, 10 guys. We all know each other really well, love each other. We really are a family, including the coach."

The Ciaccias share an apartment with Bakri, and Dean visits so frequently that it's almost as though he lives there, too.

"It's like we have two sets of brothers, but the four of us are all brothers in a way because we're so close," Nick said. "If someone were to ask, we'd say that all four of us are brothers. Not a lot of teams have that closeness or relationship. I think that really strengthens us."

ECU has competed in three events so far this fall and has one more left in the regular season — the home Pirate Invitational at Overton's Lake Kristi on Friday, Oct. 13 — before The American meet. The Southeast Regional will be Nov. 10 in Charlottesville, Va., and the NCAA Championships are Nov. 18 in Louisville, Ky.

The first two meets were the Temple Invitational and then the Adidas Challenge on Sept. 15. Just like at the Paul Short, ECU's top four finishers in the first two meets were Bakri, Nick, Dean and Andrew.

"It's kind of unique to see two sets of brothers kind of come together," Andrew said. "Me and Nick have worked well together over the years, and Dean and Bakri have worked well together. It's kind of transformed into all four of us working well together, understanding each other's training and different philosophies and coming together as a whole instead of just two sets of brothers."

"They know when to turn the switch on and when to turn it off," Weaver said. "I love that they're competitive in everything. They have that competitive edge to push each other every day in practice, and they know by doing that they make themselves better and they make the Pirates better."

That showed that at the AAC outdoor track and field meet last spring, when ECU's men's distance group scored the second-most points of any school's distance group. Adding Bakri to the arsenal after losing their top two cross country runners from a year ago to graduation should help keep that trend going.

"I have some individual goals that relate to the team and I have goals that relate to myself," Bakri said. "What's more important is I want to build my brother and these guys, the rest of the team, to try to have guys fully capable of being excellent together. I want to carry on a legacy that this program builds."

"When you have family on the team, you know you have each other's back," Dean said. "I always have Bakri's back, or Nick's and Andrew's back, and I know they have mine."

Players Mentioned

Bakri Abushouk

Dean Abushouk

Andrew Ciaccia

Nick Ciaccia

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