Lindy Verhage
MC’s cross country team hosted their annual Octoberfest meet at Black Mountain Ranch Community Park on, Friday Oct. 7. In comparison to the invite the team held a few weeks back at Morley field, this meet was much smaller, with only four other teams in attendance. Both boys and girls ran a course of 2.65 miles through the hills and valleys of Black Mountain.
Junior Katie Hawley had a successful race, coming in second. Each race was divided by grade: 9/10th graders ran together and 11/12th graders ran together.
“Today 11/12 girls ran fairly well,” Hawley said. “Not our best meet but we are coming up steady. We are getting stronger.”
This meet was sandwiched between the team’s few league meets, so it was a nice way to take a breath and have a low stress race.
“It’s more of a little break in between league 1 and league 2 meets to make sure we are all running well with minimal injuries,” Hawley said.
However, throughout this calmer meet, athletes still had last week’s races in mind and were setting their eyes towards Oct. 27.
“League one we had our number one runner Priyanka Shreedar out and we still got 2nd place, so I think we could easily win league finals meet,” Hawley said. “[It’s] not easy. it’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication. But I think it’s possible if we are all mentally tough.”
For junior Brennan Close, this meet was a nice break and fun way to kick off MC’s homecoming weekend.
“We can relax a little bit [for this meet]. We’re just enjoying [ourselves] and getting ready to enjoy homecoming,” Close said.
Even though this meet has little significance in the team’s league standing, it was still a very telling meet.
“This might be the first time we have everyone running so this is going to be a good gauge for how we’re going to [do in the future],” Close said.
Yet, in preparing for this meet and meets to come, the team has been putting in extra milage. Running a multitude of miles every week puts great amounts of stress on the body, and the runners of MC cross country team have definitely been feeling this stress. As the team prepares for future races, this is something crucial to keep in mind.
“[We need to be] taking care of injuries for sure; making sure they don’t get worse,” Hawley said. “No slacking off. Everyday we need to be improving.”
