ESCANABA – Attend a cross country or track event in or around Delta County, and you’re likely to see a seasoned sportswriter standing near the finish line, stopwatch in hand.

Come watch your son or daughter run in one of the many weekend five-kilometer events during the summer, and you’ll probably see him there, too.

In fact, go outside the county for a day, perhaps to the Copper Country, Norway, Negaunee or Naubinway, just to name a few.

There’s a good chance you’ll see the man who has become the most trusted name in Upper Peninsula cross country and track over the last 30-plus years – John Vrancic.

His dedication to the two related sports have earned him much notoriety among athletes and media outlets around the U.P. His stories are published daily in not only the Daily Press, but The Mining Journal of Marquette, the Daily News of Iron Mountain, the Daily Globe of Ironwood, the Evening News of Sault Ste. Marie, and a number or other weekly and daily outlets.

So Vrancic was deservedly honored for a long and illustrious career recently during the fall meeting of the U.P. Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association with the James Trethewey Award for Distinguished Service.

The award annually is presented to an individual who has worked to benefit opportunities for U.P. student-athletes.

“Like any career, you have your ups and downs, but for the most part, it’s been very positive,” Vrancic said. “I’ve enjoyed working with the kids. I’ve even given some of them pointers in the past, and had some coaches ask me for advice. It’s kind of nice to be in that realm.

“You try to help any kid, any way you can. It doesn’t matter what school they’re from – Escanaba, Gladstone, Menominee, St. Ignace, Ironwood or Calumet.”

Vrancic’s love for cross country and track began at an early age.

“I went to school in Ramsay, between Bessemer and Wakefield. Back at that time ninth grade was considered junior high and there was no opportunity to go out for track,” Vrancic said. “I wanted to go out my sophomore year and I had a knee injury and couldn’t.

“I went out for the first time my junior year, and it was one of those situations where I didn’t really know what was going on. I learned many lessons the hard way.”

Vrancic wrote for his school newspaper in high school, and later for the Bay de Noc Community College school newspaper, but when he was hired at the Daily Press in 1985 he soon found there was a lot to learn.

“It was a lot different here, and I found out in a hurry that I was pretty green,” he said. “That first year was very humbling. It wasn’t at all what I expected and I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I learned a lot of lessons, many of them the hard way.

“When I first started, I remember riding with the cross country team to Ishpeming. John Prokos was coaching at the time, and I told John, ‘I’ll probably be here a year and move on to a different job.’

“I didn’t know for sure at that point, if this was the right direction or not.”

Vrancic’s passion for covering cross country and track soon came to be noticed by other outlets around the U.P. The two sports are not as commonly covered by most writers, who favor the more visible sports of football, baseball, hockey and basketball. Eventually, Vrancic landed his first freelance opportunity.

“It was 1987 and the Ironwood Daily Globe wanted me to cover Ewen-Trout Creek and Brimley in a Class D state quarterfinal girls’ basketball game in Escanaba,” Vrancic said. “Back at that time, I’d type a story to run in our paper, and the next morning I’d call the Daily Globe, and I’d actually dictate the story over the phone to them. We didn’t have fax machines, and we didn’t have Internet. It was virtually unheard of back then. It’s a lot easier now with … email.”

Vrancic’s instantaneous recall of previous sporting events, coaches’ phone numbers and athletes’ achievements make him an invaluable member of any newspaper staff, and his knowledge of the two sports he loves most set him apart from the dozens of other writers in the Upper Peninsula, making his services well in demand. During the U.P. Cross Country Finals and U.P. Track Finals, it’s not uncommon for Vrancic to write for six or more outlets, tailoring each story for that newspaper’s needs.

“It takes quite a few years to earn that trust, like anything else,” Vrancic said of his freelance opportunities. “It takes a while to get started and I wasn’t real aggressive with it at first. Now, I just go after it whenever there’s an opportunity.”

That kind of work ethic is something that was instilled in Vrancic from an early age.

“My dad often had little jobs for me to do whenever we went to our cottage,” he said. “I’d mow the lawn, wash dishes at home.”

Vrancic has covered sporting events in the U.P. over three decades, but there is one memory that sticks out above the rest. It occurred at the 1989 U.P. Track Finals.

“The finals were held in Marquette, and there was a young man from Brimley by the name of John Payment. He had a high jump of 7-foot-1 that day,” Vrancic said.

“They actually stopped the meet when they announced the bar was up to 6-11, and everyone came to watch, people were sprinting to the high jump bar to watch this young man jump. I’m about 5-foot-8 and I’m looking at this bar, more than a foot over my head, and on the first jump, he clears 6-11. Then he nailed the first jump at 7 feet, and again at 7-1, first try.

“I think most of us couldn’t quite believe what we were seeing,” he said. “At 7-2, he hit the bar on the way up. On the second jump, he had it cleared, but his shorts nicked the bar on the way down, and the bar didn’t stay on. On the third jump, I think the tank just hit empty. But what an amazing effort.

“It was the most amazing individual feat I’ve ever seen. It’s a state record, almost Olympic caliber.”

Vrancic has been a part-time employee with the Daily Press for all but two years of his career. Over the years he’s learned to recognize and overcome his faults and flourish in other areas of the job.

“I think I can honestly say I do pretty good work,” he said. “I don’t have the ability to work fast and that’s something I’ve struggled with all my life, and let’s face it, you’re not going to get faster as you get older.”

“You find a way,” added Vrancic. “It took me a while to figure that out, but this has worked better for me than having a full-time position.”

James Trethewey, who the Distinguished Service Award is named for, was a founding member of the UPSSA, longtime editor of the Marquette Mining Journal, and the first executive director of the U.P. Sports Hall of Fame.

Recipients from the Superiorland area have included Gil Heard, Mickey Johnson and Jerry Pangrazzi of Marquette; Burt Boyum of Ishpeming; El and Norma Harger of Munising; Donna Blood and Scott Lloyd of L’Anse; Patty Gagnon of Negaunee; and Dick Ketcik of Manistique.