Pocatello senior Brevin Vaughan is not the biggest guy in the world. For his sport, that doesn’t matter. In cross country, it’s about preparation, about endurance, about mental fortitude. It’s one of the few sports where the biggest or strongest or most-skilled guy doesn’t always win.

Last summer, Vaughan really began to realize cross country was about pain management. Whoever could endure more would come out ahead.

“I always like to say running is 90% in your head,” Vaughan said. “If you’re willing to go through the pain and the stuff in your head, your body is pretty amazing. I looked back and looked at my mental and changed some things. Not only races but in workouts and runs, that’s what allowed me to break barriers.”

First Vaughan broke 16 minutes. Then he finished 3rd in the 4A State Cross Country Race. And on Monday, Vaughan signed with The College of Idaho on a cross country and track scholarship.

“I think they’re going to get even more out of him (than we did),” Pocatello coach Shannon Whitmer said. “Brevin is mentally strong.”

Whitmer remembers getting a freshman Vaughan back in 2017. He was 5-foot-6, 95 pounds and was pulling double-duty between cross country and football. After he set a 19:10 personal record (PR), assistant coach Danny Grimes told Vaughan and his family that if he focused solely on cross country, he could do great things.

It didn’t take long for Vaughan to see results. In his sophomore year, Vaughan’s PR dropped by almost three minutes. He ran a 16:24 and finished 30th at state.

“It could not be more of a prototypical type of high school student you would want to see in cross country,” Whitmer said. “Just getting faster and he ran five or six races (his sophomore year) and to have a jump from 19:10 to 16:24, it just shows the commitment he made there.”

For all the commitment and improvement, though, one major goal alluded Vaughan. He couldn’t break 16 minutes. While he improved his junior season, Vaughan’s PR only dropped to 16:04. It was a tantalizing close call that fueled him into the extended COVID summer.

“It was frustrating at first but I kind of had to take a step back and look at my training and look at what I was doing,” Vaughan said. “I was able to use that more as motivating than something to set me back.”

With no track season last spring to keep his team training rolling, Vaughan finished up the semester and set a goal. That’s not uncommon for cross-country runners. Summers for distance athletes are, perhaps, more influential on a season than any other sport. Building up miles and endurance in the summer is the only way to catapult into great times out of the gate.

Most goals, however, are more tempered than what Vaughan went for. He set out to run 450 miles over the break. A few people reading this probably haven’t run 450 miles in their life. Vaughan wanted to do it in about three months, which meant running an average of five miles a day.

“My feet have been completely destroyed these last few months,” Vaughan noted.

That meant sometimes going on two runs a day. Or waking up early during vacation to get a few miles in before his family woke up. Worst of all, Vaughan is a starting guard on the Poky basketball squad, which also trains and plays games during the summer. So he ran for cross country, changed clothes and went and ran on the basketball court.

One week this summer, Vaughan ran 50 miles and played 13 basketball games.

“It’s kind of funny. I love ‘Creed 2,’ I watch that movie all the time and what they talk about in that movie and what our coaches talk about is that pain, it just makes you want to stop,” Vaughan said.

Not giving in to that is what sets runners apart. And for Vaughan, nowhere was that exemplified more than this year’s state cross country race.

After just breaking the 16-minute a month earlier at the Dani Bates Invitational, Vaughan’s two races leading up to state were disappointing. He finished 16 and 32 seconds above his PR, respectively, and was a little “down” as he started his final high school cross country race.

“I couldn’t let that get me down. I had to use it,” Vaughan said. “As I worked through the race, my mind was pretty much blank … My mentality was just go get the guy in front of me the whole time. I guess it paid off in the end.”

In the final 800 meters of the race, Vaughan worked his way from 13th place to third, finishing just behind his Poky teammate Shane Gard (1st) and Century’s Xander Thompson. Vaughan crossed the finish line and strutted around the Portneuf Wellness Complex with a mile-wide grin all afternoon.

He had gone through a summer of hell to train for his final cross country season. Two-a-days, a 450-mile goal, balancing running and basketball. It was a lot, enough to make a weaker man quit. But it made him stronger. And in his final race, it all paid off.

“As I pushed through, I knew people around me are feeling the same thing. If I was willing to battle that pain more than they were, I could beat them and be successful,” Vaughan said. “A lot of it is battling and being more willing to endure what the others around you aren’t.”