It’s not how you start, so the saying goes, but where you end up.

Braeden Hindley’s cross country story is an interesting one. But it’s also a work in progress.

The Northside runner, who won the Fort Smith Invitational last week at Ben Geren, sprinting through the humid Fort Smith morning with a time of 17:46.5, started out as a runner.

Then, just when it looked like he was about to take off, a four-wheeler accident sent him on a difference course.

“Here’s kind of a story of how it happened,” Hindley said. “In seventh grade, it was my first year, and I just had three track meets because of rain. In the eighth grade, knowing I could run with eighth-graders and ninth-graders, and run pretty good distances, I ran cross country.”

Then, Hindley’s career went off the rails — at least for a little bit.

“A week before conference (2015), I broke my orbital bone in a four-wheeler accident,” Hindley said. “So, from then on, I was so mad, I didn’t run track in the ninth grade.”

Hindley, who attended Chaffin Junior High, didn’t run cross country last season because he was playing football for the Grizzlies.

Then came a knock on coach Jeff Lewis’ door.


“He came to me in February and said, ‘Coach, I want to run track.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ I had never met him,” Lewis explained. “He told me who he was, so I took him to the state indoor meet, and two weeks later he ran 5:06 (mile). I’m like, ‘OK, this guy can go.’ He’s completely out of (track) shape and he runs a 5:06.”

By the end of the spring, Hindley was running 4:33 — not exactly world-beating time, but for a kid who just happened to show up was extraordinarily good.

“He had no base,” Lewis said. “He’s trained all summer and has the potential to be the fastest runner I’ve had at Northside. He’s a great kid, too.”

“The week before that, we had a time trial, and I had run a 5:30 in the mile,” Hindley said of the practice leading up to the indoor meet. “Then we ran again and I took a little at the sheet, and coach had me down for a 5:10. I walked up to him and said, ‘Coach, you know that’s 20 seconds faster than what I ran the other day.’ He said, ‘Do you believe in yourself?’

“I remember coming around the last lap at the indoor (meet) and I saw 4:55, and I just pushed and got it.”

Now, with his junior year ahead of him, leading up to his senior campaign, Hindley is building on momentum.

“I thought about possibly going to a lower college, to build up my base, because there are tons of other runners who have been doing this in cross country since the eighth grade,” Hindley said. “Then, if I get going, push for something bigger.”
