The girls junior varsity cross country team has been working hard to achieve their goals for the season. This year’s new head coach, Shawn Crain, has a few goals in mind that he’d like his junior varsity runners to reach. One of those goals is for every runner to have a 5k goal time to work on throughout the season, along with working on having consistent mile splits.
Coach Crain said, “You don’t want to take off too fast or save too much for the end, so learning your race pace is very important.”
One big goal for the team would be to place well at conference and districts.
“Most importantly is making sure all 20 runners know that they are valuable to the team, and that their goals are all different, but all very important.” said Coach Crain. “Building a great team atmosphere of support for one another makes for better practice and competition.”
There have been a total of three meets so far, and the team has placed about mid way at most races, meaning the team placed around fifth or sixth place at each meet.
Cross country practices are a mix of several different types of runs. The team does long distance runs, tempo runs, longer repeats, and shorter repeats to work on velocity. Individual runners each have a specific workout time to help reach their 5k goal time.
This year there are a total of 20 girls out for cross country, along with one manager. The junior varsity cross country team will continue to work hard throughout the season in order to improve their times and reach their goals.
Article contributed by Elie Tuhn.
