Casey Zanowicz
Round Table Editor
For any sport or athletic competition, the road to states is never easy. Athletes attend long practices, spend hours training, and push themselves to new limits. Every team dreams to attend states, but it takes the most physically and mentally prepared team in order to bring back the title.
That’s exactly what the Middletown High School girls cross country team is hoping to accomplish this year.
Cross country for the first time since 2000 is hoping to win first place for the 2A division at Hereford, the state course.
Starting in the late spring, runners begin training for the fall season. By starting early, this ensures runners that they will have adequate time to improve and hit their stride before the regular season begins.
As the athletes enter preseason, not only did they participate in the usual two-a-days, but they also attend a rigorous cross country camp. The team had to rise at the crack of dawn and run anywhere from 4 to 5 miles twice a day. In addition to all the running, athletes took part in intense swim workouts, games, and hikes to the local dining hall.
“Cross country camp pushed me to do better. It showed me my place on the team and what I had to do in order to get where I wanted to be. Not only did it get everyone in shape, but we got a chance to bond and get to know one another not only as athletes but as people,” said MHS sophomore Samantha David.
As the regular season begins, all the training and work outs begin to take a toll on some of the athletes. Shin splints, blisters and pulled muscles were all common injuries. But despite all the ailments, the team continued to preserve day after day.
“At the beginning it’s a lot of physical pain, but once you get into the depth of season, you learn to ignore the pain by your mental capacity and you can not feel it as much until you get home, because you’re so motivated while racing,” said junior and captain Julia Karcewski
Gretchen Whitesell, a senior and another captain of the cross country team found she could always turn to her coach for mentoring and advice.
“My biggest athletic influence is coach Stevens because he has never pressured me to do anything but always encouraged me to do the best that I can do. I admire him as a coach because he doesn’t ask his team to do something that he can not do. He runs with us at practice to help improve our pace,” said Gretchen”
The team would also agree that assistant coach Tim Noffsinger was a huge motivator as he would inform the team daily at practice about the number of days until states, 75 days, 50 days, 25 days, 15 days, and the anticipation grew greater and greater.
On a cross country team there are only seven people who can participate in a varsity race. Times can range from meet to meet, as some runners would improve and pass others. The top seven, named varsity, could constantly change week to week as the runners have good and bad races.
As the athletes reached the home stretch of the season all the hard work paid off, when the team took second place at the County Championships on October 30th.
After placing second at the Regional level, last Thursday, the team qualified for States for the first time in two years. With all the blood, sweat, and tears, only time will tell how the girls cross country team will perform at the State level.
