Robby Shober is the guy who's always out running. His teammates and classmates at Salem Community High School know it. No matter the weather — right now he's navigating routes around the snow — he's out there, finding roads that work, logging the miles. People find it a little crazy. He doesn't mind.

Robby has played three sports every year of high school: soccer in the fall alongside cross country, then track in the spring. The events that suit him best are distance — he's primarily a two-mile guy. The training week looks like this: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are eight-mile easy runs after school. Tuesdays and Thursdays are speed workouts on the roads and the track behind the high school. Saturday, he might rest or run another eight. Sunday is his long run — this past weekend, he went to Carlyle and covered twelve miles. He's run sixteen miles in a single training run. Was he ready to be done at ten? "I was ready to be done after ten." He kept going anyway.

He started cross country in middle school just to stay in shape for soccer. Somewhere in there, he discovered he was good at it. Now the sport has folded into who he is at a cellular level. "That's the fun in it," he said simply.

This senior season carries a specific goal: to qualify for both the indoor and outdoor state meets. He came close last year. "It breaks my heart because I was so close to qualifying. And I think I just want it even more now." After cross country this fall, he knows what he's capable of. He's not guessing.

The injuries have helped him know that, too. He's been hurt many times — he lists the setbacks matter-of-factly, without complaint. Each one became part of the argument he makes to himself. "I have so much faith in God that I'm like, hey, this is happening for a reason, and I'm gonna come out on the other side way better. And that's what's happened every time, because I believed in it." The progress isn't linear, he said. It goes up and down. But the direction, over time, is up.

He's thought carefully about what running has taught him beyond the sport. "You can say you believe, but I think it's a whole other thing to actually put that work into it and commit to believing. Even when it takes years and years to get where I want to be." He said he's willing to wait even longer for a small bit of progress, because he knows it's worth it. Nothing's going to be handed to him. He knows that applies to a job, to a career, to anything worth doing.

That career is taking shape. Next fall, Robby will attend Kaskaskia College on a full scholarship to run cross country, studying criminal justice. He wants to help people — he said it a couple of ways, and meant it each time. "Just serving others means a lot to me." Whether that's local law enforcement or state work, he said he'd be proud of it either way.

His people are his family — mom, dad, and his younger brother Liam, a freshman now, who they used to fight with constantly and who they've gradually built a real relationship with. "We've learned to just put everything aside and help each other get better." His teammates across all three sports round out the room. When he shows up to practice with a smile, he said, that's mostly their doing.

He knows what he'd tell his younger self: stop overthinking it. Take the times less seriously. Enjoy the process. He spent too much of middle school worrying whether he was running the right splits to earn respect. He's grown out of that. "It's really not that deep. Nobody's going to care about what time I run 20 years down the road. I respect any athlete just for going out there and trying their best."

That's where he's landed. Still running, still improving, still chasing state qualification — but lighter about all of it than he used to be.