Yokota's Matthew Rowland capped his senior season by winning the Far East D-II cross country race a second straight year and helping the Panthers win successive Far East team banners. (Natalie DeLeo/Special to Stripes)
He and Yokota's cross country team capped the 2024 DODEA-Pacific season by sweeping all the team banners the Far East meet had to offer. Rowland, then a junior, also won the Division II boys 5-kilometer individual race.
So, why not go for it all again? Rowland said he told himself entering the just-completed 2025 campaign.
And true to his thoughts and goals, the Panthers won it all once more. Rowland made it back-to-back victories in the D-II 5-K run and Yokota won the Far East overall school banner two years running.
"The amount of hours we put in, we wanted to go back-to-back and make coach (Danny Galvin) proud," Rowland said. "We wanted to make our last year count. Me and the rest of the seniors, we said this was our last race; we wanted to go out with a bang."
In so doing, Rowland has been named Stars and Stripes Pacific boys cross country Athlete of the Year.
It was a tightly crowded field, featuring Far East Division I champion Kyle Durkee of American School In Japan, Kadena's William Rhoades and Guam High's Caleb Steele.
Galvin, himself a former Far East champion, calls Rowland a "nose to the grindstone" runner whose workouts simply don't let up.
"He's really locked in, a hard worker. There's really no pause" to his work ethic, Galvin said of Rowland.
Shortly after last spring's Far East track and field meet - Rowland runs distance races for the Panthers - Rowland got back out on the roads and grounds of Yokota Air Base, a relentless effort to keep in shape well before the cross country season started in August.
"I probably ran down every road on Yokota during the summer," Rowland said, adding that he and fellow senior Vito Cabrera trained side-by-side with each other during the summer heat.
Rowland finished no worse than 11th in every race he ran during the season, placing first in the Sept. 13 meet at Atago sports complex near Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, in 17 minutes, 19.3 seconds.
Then came the Far East meet on Oct. 17, at Ikego Heights Naval Housing Facility near Yokosuka Naval Base, where he set a personal best 16:58.1, 15.7 seconds ahead of D-II runner-up Nolan Grubb of E.J. King and 11th best overall.
In the boys 5-K team points chase, Yokota's boys beat Christian Academy Japan 42-74, with King third in 77.
The next day in the team relay, Rowland and sophomore teammate Madeline Frost came in second overall and won the D-II portion. The Panthers edged CAJ 52-57 in the relay team standings and edged CAJ 4-5 for the overall school banner.
"Madeline had a really good second leg," Rowland recalled. "I was trying not to let her down. She had trained hard all summer, too. To place second overall means we did very well. We were just really happy for each other."
It takes a team, Rowland said, for individual runners to be successful and for a team to follow suit.
"It's more of a team sport than most people think," he said. "We push each other, working toward that higher goal. Without those seventh and eighth runners pushing each other, we wouldn't have won like we did."
To Rowland, winning the second of two Far East banners meant more to him. "I put a lot more training into it, so (this year) was a lot more rewarding," he said.
Sports played besides cross country: Track and field, middle- and long-distance events.