Cross Country, Indoor Track, Spring Track
Favorite athlete: Kyle Kutney. He is a freshman at the Naval Academy and I ran with him throughout high school.
Favorite team: My favorite team aside from the CRS Hawks is the New York Yankees
Favorite memory competing in sports: The District One championship race. It was my first time on varsity and I felt like I ran as fast as I could.
Most embarrassing moment competing in sports: One of my teammates actually pooped his pants within 15 meters of the school when coming back from a distance run.
Music on mobile device: Rap this year for working out (Eminem), pop nostalgic music from the 2000s, and a lot of classic rock
Future plans: Air Force ROTC, running competitively in District II or III, or intramural. Major in history or perhaps business
Favorite motto: “Great things never come from Comfort zones
One goal before turning 30: Run a marathon
One thing people don’t know about me: My friends and I make epic content on our YouTube channel Pepperoni Pants. Go subscribe! Shoutout!
By Ed Morrone
Jared Loeper – despite going through the physical and mental wringer - still managed to save his best for last.
It’s fitting that Loeper’s primary sport is cross country, as the Council Rock South senior unwittingly took the scenic route to athletic fulfillment and success. He was a member of the varsity squad from his freshman year, but a cacophony of inopportunely-timed health issues threatened to derail his progress altogether time and time again.
“Sophomore year I got Lyme disease, which pretty much ruined my cross country season,” Loeper said. “I came back for winter track and did OK there, but then for spring season my times started declining. It wasn’t so noticeable or alarming at the time, so I didn’t see a medical professional.
“Then, during junior year of cross country, I started well, getting my time to around the 18-minute area. But throughout the season, the time kept going up and up and up until it was 20, 21 minutes. My legs were like bricks during races, and as soon as I got home I would just crash and sleep for hours and hours. It was frustrating not knowing why my times were getting so much higher.”
Ultimately, Loeper went to see a doctor, and after a battery of blood testing, it was discovered that he had iron-deficiency anemia, a condition in which the body lacks healthy red blood cells. Finally, Loeper had an explanation for why he was so fatigued all the time, but the resolution did little to comfort him in the moment.
Despite the unknown medical condition impacting his own times, Loeper’s teammates were able to qualify for the state meet as a team. He was beyond ecstatic that the Hawks were able to get there, but having to watch the state’s most prestigious meet from the sidelines was tough for Loeper.
“It was honestly a dark time,” he said of the entire saga.
But Loeper, who has also battled pneumonia and other nagging physical ailments, refused to throw in the towel. It’s doubtful that anyone would have blamed him if he did after being knocked to the canvas multiple times by unforeseen uppercuts; however, cross country and competitive running is something Loeper had grown to love. It had become a major part of his identity, and he was determined to turn things around once and for all.
Loeper started out playing soccer growing up, but shifted his focus to cross country and track after being cut from a middle school travel team. His mom introduced him to a CYO cross country program in seventh grade, and Loeper took to it almost immediately. Not only was he good at it, but he loved the way it made him feel.
“I loved running as soon as I was introduced to it,” he said. “It’s hard to describe in that moment the way it made me feel, but I knew that it was amazing.”
Although the various health problems Loeper endured during his sophomore and junior years were frustrating, he didn’t let the maladies diminish his enthusiasm or spirit. If anything, he approached the adversity as a personal challenge to make it back as a real contributor for his senior campaign. South would be graduating its top two seniors that helped the team reach the state tournament, and if the Hawks had any chance to make it back as a team, Loeper felt he needed to be a vital piece of the puzzle.
He started running on his own again the June before his senior season, not long before summer practices were set to begin. Loeper had another brief health scare when a knee injury flared up, but he was able to work through it with physical therapy. His dogged perseverance and refusal to give up paid major dividends, as Loeper ended up becoming a key cog on a team that ended up winning a league championship and collectively qualifying for the state meet.
The Hawks placed 8th out of 19 teams at states, and Loeper earned first team all-league honors in Suburban One for his efforts.
“Jared’s final season was more than I expected from him,” Council Rock South head cross country coach Paul Wilson said. “He made a real impact on our team. Winning a league championship and placing at states, Jared was a big part of that. Without him, we don’t qualify. It just wasn’t going to happen. The quality of his performances, which were very high, had a great deal to do with us making it. He works so hard and is certainly an exceptional kid.”
Loeper absolutely put the work in to earn everything he accomplished, but even he was unsure if he would make it back in the capacity that he did. Sure, he had faith, but skepticism is a natural opponent to belief.
“I put the work in, but I don’t know if I ever thought it would go this far,” he said. “It’s hard to believe I was such a key component in us getting to states. I think you can probably take anyone out of the equation and say that, but I also feel special in a way because I think there are a lot of guys who would have just given up. It’s senior year, what’s the point? I’m so proud of the team and what we were able to accomplish together.”
Loeper still has more running to do for South, with winter track just getting underway and the spring season, where he mostly runs the 3200m, will be on the horizon after that. But he’s already immensely missing the cross country camaraderie — winter season is mostly a tune-up for the spring campaign, and once spring comes, the number of players on the team swells to around 70 and fails to provide the tight-knit closeness that Loeper felt during cross country.
He also said he missed the team’s year-end banquet this year due to an illness, so Loeper is still lacking the closure on the season that the rest of his teammates received that night.
“The season is still kind of lingering in my mind,” he said. “Everyone always talks about the championship, but hardly anybody thinks about the day after. It’s like, ‘What now?’ Winter track is fine, but with cross country you work so hard for five months and then it’s just over, you know?”
Luckily for Loeper, the college search and application process is keeping him plenty busy. He initially expected to be attending Bucks County Community College following high school, but started getting more thorough in his quest back in September or October to see what other options may be out there.
Loeper crafted a list of five schools that he applied to: Temple, Pitt, Drexel, Rowan and West Chester, and he’s already been accepted to Rowan. He’s still waiting to hear back from the other schools, but Rowan is alluring in the sense that the school offers cross country at the Division III level, and Wilson, Loeper’s head coach, said that his runner definitely has the requisite speed and skills to compete and thrive there if he chooses to further pursue competitive running.
“Yeah, absolutely, without a doubt,” Loeper responded when asked if running in college was an interest of his. “Pitt, Drexel and Temple are all Division I, so if I ended up going to any of those schools, I’d have to run club, and I don’t know if I’d be satisfied doing that. West Chester is Division II so maybe I could get on to that team, I’m not sure.”
Loeper is in the process of submitting an application for an Air Force ROTC scholarship, stating that he loves the idea of being a part of a group or team, even if cross country doesn’t end up panning out in college. He isn’t sure of his career trajectory yet, but knows he loves English and Social Studies, namely World History. Loeper would like to do something with that interest, or perhaps he’ll study business.
Additionally, Loeper is an Eagle Scout and enjoys participating with the organization even if his demanding physical therapy schedule has made attending weekly meetings and monthly camping trips a bit more difficult. Loeper and his friends also have their own YouTube channel called Pepperoni Pants, though the content they create has nothing to do with pepperoni, pizza or pants. The channel has close to 750 subscribers, and Loeper and company have produced nearly 30 videos to date.
“The videos are all over the place,” he said. “It’s a wacky channel, just a group of guys where the premise is just filming whatever we can that we think is cool and making whatever we can in iMovie.”
Even though Loeper didn’t truly burst on to the scene with a measurable impact until his senior year, he will surely be missed when the 2020 season comes calling. For a kid who endured as many health and physical setbacks as Loeper did, he can be an inspirational and motivational force to teammates, a beacon of perseverance and determination in what is already a physically-grueling sport.
“Jared put an imprint on the team with his personality and presence,” Wilson said. “When you have them for four years, you get used to having them around to the point where the kids feel like they’re your own family. We’ll definitely miss all of those intangibles he adds to the team that aren’t easily expressed or measured but are certainly present.”
For his part, Loeper will miss cross country and Council Rock South dearly when it’s his time to graduate and move on to the next chapter. Heck, he already does, and he still has the rest of the winter and spring ahead of him.
Knowing Loeper’s history, it wouldn’t be a shock to see him save a little more of his best for the conclusion of his student-athlete story.
“Handling adversity, I’ve been there,” he said. “I’ll miss the team aspect of cross country, because our team was so close. We had some nights where we just went ice skating or played volleyball as a team, or spent time hanging out at somebody’s house. With not as many kids on the team, it allowed us the opportunity to be closer.
“That closeness is what I’ll miss the most, along with wearing that Hawks uniform as a symbol. It always felt very good representing South, knowing you were a part of a team that was truly special.”
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