Trent Dean can recall a pep talk he gave to Kyle Norris more than a year ago, and it’s almost laughable now.

It was the summer of 2013, and Dean, as coach, was still relatively new to Cullman’s cross country program. So was Norris.

Well, sort of.

Norris actually ventured into the sport as a seventh-grader, only to almost immediately venture back out for three years to focus on swimming. His return to running came on the track, and let’s just say it was less than glamorous.

And by let’s, I mean Norris. He was the first to poke fun at his once-sophomore self during his senior speech at the ’Cats recent cross country banquet.

But I digress …

Norris was back on the trails for the first time since middle school, and Dean, in his first offseason with Cullman, could tell the young man meant business. June rolled along. Then July. And with each summer workout, Dean watched Norris creep closer and closer to keeping up with the Black and Gold’s quickest boys.

And when I say quick, I mean it. Nicholas Fillinger? Samuel Murphree? The two could flat out fly.

So when Dean saw Norris start to show early signs of his now-trademark consistency — the very virtue that led him to being The Times’ 2014 Prep Boys Runner of the Year — he pulled the youngster aside and offered a few words of encouragement.

“‘If you’ll keep working like this every day at practice and pushing yourself, you’re going to be in the top five this year,’” Dean remembers telling Norris. “And then by the end of the season, unfortunate circumstances, he ended up taking the No. 1 spot on the team. Once he asserted himself and he kind of got used to people working off of him, he became the leader of the boys team.

“He’s been that ever since.”

Unfortunate circumstances?

More like tragic.

The world lost Fillinger on Sept. 26, 2013. He was 16. He’d just broken the school’s 5K record and was easily the most promising runner to come through Cullman in recent memory.

And then, far too soon, he was gone.

But not forgotten.

Less than 48 hours after Fillinger’s sudden death, Cullman’s heavy-hearted cross country team collectively decided to keep its commitment to run at the Kudzu Hills Invitational. For Nic. It’s what he would’ve wanted.

The girls stayed side-by-side throughout the entire course, and Seth Swalve, in his only race of the season, willed the boys to an inspired second-place showing. Norris was 12th.

Two weeks later, at the Bearcat Invitational, he was first. For the first time. With his first sub-18-minute 5K.

Norris’s main motivation?

Fillinger, of course.

“He would show up every day and just really get after it,” Dean said of Fillinger. “When you’re that guy up front that’s having to set the tone for everybody else, that can be difficult day in and day out. But he would always do it. And so Kyle saw that, and Kyle got the luxury of working off of Nicholas for quite awhile.

“And then after Nicholas passed, we talked one day and I said, ‘You’ve seen what you have to do at practice. Nicholas used to do that, and now you’ve got to be able to do that.’ I think he took it upon himself as like, that was a special honor. He took it serious. Really, every practice from that point forward, he was that man.”

Norris’s successes carried over to the indoor track season, where he wowed Dean with a perfectly calibrated internal clock at the state meet.

The gameplan in the 1-mile was for Norris to settle into a certain position and then maintain 32-second splits the rest of his circuits. To the coach’s amazement, Norris hit the target time six or sevens laps in a row, allowing him to surge through late traffic for a third-place finish.

“It’s just phenomenal that he’s able to execute the race plan to that much of a T,” Dean said. “Not just from a physical standpoint, but the way he’s able to execute is just as special as anything else.”

Bronze was nice at the time, but Norris had more gold in mind for his final cross country campaign. He claimed his first individual title of the season — and fastest time (16:06) — at Randolph’s zany “Run in the Mud” and later capped off a four-meet streak with the Class 6A, Section 5 title.

Norris rode the momentum to a third-place state showing at Oakville Indian Mounds, no easy feat in a talent-packed 6A field. The All-State result motored Cullman to fifth out of 18 teams.

Norris is currently training for the highly competitive Foot Locker South Regional Nov. 29 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jared Stanley, C.J. Lang and Kramer Crider, all hailing from 2A state-champion Cold Springs, were joined by West Point’s Joey Riggs and St. Bernard’s Steven Mami on a short list of honorable mentions.