Dominique Cameron
Sport: Cross-Country
School: Leonia
Class: Sophomore.
Accomplishment: In her first year of cross country running, Cameron became Leonia’s first Bergen County girls champion at the Lou Molino Bergen Meet of Champions, running a school record 18:24 for 5,000 meters.
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Paul Schwartz – NorthJersey.com
If things had turned out a little differently for Dominique Cameron, she might have been the Leonia soccer goal keeper, a starting forward in basketball, and a shot and discus thrower in spring track.
Instead, Cameron became just the fourth sophomore to win the Bergen County girls cross country championship and is already considered the best distance runner in Leonia High School history in her first season in the sport.
“I still can’t believe it,” Cameron said. “If you told me last year this was possible, I would have laughed at you.”
“I had run in middle school for fun and I did pretty well, but I went out for soccer last year since I’ve been playing it my whole life,” she said. “We didn’t have a freshman or junior varsity team so I made varsity, and then when our goalkeeper got hurt, they moved me from fullback and I played half the season in goal.”
A solid basketball season followed with the 5-foot-7 Cameron a solid back up forward on a Lions team that went 20-7 and won the NJIC Liberty championship.
But then came track season.
“When I was in eighth grade, our middle school went to practice on the high school track and coach, (Tim) Ryan saw my sister Danielle and I running with a really good sixth grader (current eighth grader Eleanor Jang),” Dominique said. “He gave us a few tips and told us we’d see him next spring.”
By that time, Cameron had given up the idea of throwing but still wasn’t sold on the idea of distance running. “I started researching running a little bit, and initially I only wanted to run the 1,600 and maybe the 800 because I wasn’t sure I had any endurance.”
But Ryan knew better.
“I could see right away how talented she was and that her sister, who wanted to be a sprinter, was better suited for the 800,” said Ryan, himself a former star runner at Leonia. “So I put her into the 3,200 in some dual meets.”
The next thing Dominique knew, she was doubling at the NJIC league meet, breaking 5:30 and 12 minutes easily and reaching the Group 2 state championships in both the 1,600 and 3,200, where she took a pair of sevenths as the fastest freshman in the state for her group. And when she ran 11:20.08 for 12th place among freshmen at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals for two miles, her soccer and basketball careers were over.
“I started running five to six miles every day over the summer, then when August hit and official practice started, I upped my mileage,” she said. “The start of a race is the hardest part for me, trying to get yourself in the right position is so important and if you can get stuck behind too many people early, it can be hard to catch up.”
But Cameron has handled every challenge so far, setting school records at each of the five courses she’s raced, including the sectional course at Garret Mountain, the state course at Holmdel and the historic two-and-a-half mile course at Van Cortlandt Park.
And she’s done it every step of the way with her fraternal twin, Danielle, who is six minutes older. The pair has prospered together and are each other’s best friends, every though they seem to be opposites in nearly everything.
“I think she’s smarter than I am,” Dominique said. “She seems to get everything in class and she pushes me there. I push her back in sports and we seem to be opposites in a lot of things.
“She’s more of a sprinter (Danielle is an outstanding 800 runner) and I’m more about distance. She likes math and chemistry, and my favorite subjects are english and history. She likes rap and I like 80s music and pop. I’ll eat anything and she’s picky.”
Together, they have helped turn Leonia from a good cross-country team into a potential sectional champion. Dominique is enjoying the ride.
“I didn’t know what was best for me in sports until I found running,” she said. “My mom ran cross-country and track in high school in California, and dad played football and baseball at Brooklyn Tech, so they were supportive in whatever we did. I’m learning more about the sport every day and I’m really excited to see what happens next.”
