by Adam Colbert
After a winless 2012 fall season filled with agony, injuries and frustration, the girls cross country team beat Tahanto in their season opener on September 5.
“Last year wasn’t our best, we didn’t win any meets,” says junior Molly Sullivan. “We all worked as hard as we could, but it just didn’t work out during the meets.” What held them back according to senior captain Emily Collins is injuries.
“This year the majority of our team put the hard work in during the summer, so we were able to get right into the hard training once the school year got here,” says junior Baylee Loewen. “It felt good knowing that all the hard work we put in during the summer actually helped us improve,” Loewen says. Three times a week over the summer the team met to run three miles and had occasional track workouts to improve speed.
Senior captains Mary Dignan and Emily Collins are the ones who led these practices that started in July and ran right into the school year.
Coach Christina Reinhardt is a veteran of cross country as she ran through high school and college. ”[Coach Reinhardt] is really inspirational towards the runners when she speaks and gives personal advice [from her past],” says Sullivan.
“To start off the season with a victory gave us so much confidence,” says Collins. To win a meet in cross country, the team who has five people finish first wins. Hudson’s Dignan, Thaya Calewski, Loewen, Sullivan, Brittany Phillipo and Lilly Clouter finished before the first five of twenty Tahanto runners.
Since then they lost their only other meet but their top runners were absent. The future is bright for the girls cross-country team, and they are excited for the season. “Our team may be small but it’s quality over quantity,” says Sullivan.
One of the factors behind the team’s first win was the bond they share. “Since our team is so small, we are able to be a lot closer with one another. This includes a lot of bonfires, pasta parties and going out to eat,” says Loewen. On Fridays, the team goes for long runs on the bike trail, slow enough to keep a conversation. Some of the runs are two hours long!
“We all are really close and try to become close with our entire team by running together and motivating each other. One of the things we do is ‘motivation’ before each meet. Each person has one person that they have to motivate in some way before every meet by either food, a note, or something else that will get them excited. Overall, we are just really supportive of one another and make the sport a team sport instead of an individual sport,” says Sullivan.
