Girls, boys cross country teams compete against East Rockingham, Spotswood

Wednesday, March 17, the cross country team had a meet at Thomas Harrison Middle School against East Rockingham High School and Spotswood High School. Freshmen Annie Poirot, Lena Blagg, Matthew Rush and Nathaniel Bunn all competed in Wednesday’s race. 

Poirot completed the race in second place and took 23.05.00 to complete the girls varsity race. Blagg finished in fourth place and took 23.25.00 to complete the girls varsity race. The average time for the HHS girls was 24:58. Rush finished in 14th place and took 19.47.80 to complete the boys varsity race. The average time for the HHS boys was 18:49. Bunn finished in fifth place and took 22.29.00 to complete the mixed JV race. The average time for the JV runners was 21:46. 

Poirot thinks that yesterday’s meet went well overall. She also got her personal record time at the race. Her personal record is 23:05. Poirot’s most favorite part of yesterday’s meet was completing the race.

“I think it went pretty well yesterday; I actually felt pretty good about it, I PRed, so that was good. It was my personal record out of all three [races], so it felt pretty good,” Poirot said. 

Blagg also thinks yesterday’s race went well for both the girls and boys teams. She thinks the teams looked good out on the course, and she also thinks she did well during the race.

“Overall, I thought it went really well. Our team looked strong out [on the course], both boys and girls, and I felt good out there as well,” Blagg said. 

Blagg’s favorite parts of the meet were finishing the race, spending time with her teammates and cheering on the other teams racing. 

“Of course I loved actually running in the race, but once all the girls finished [we were] hanging out and cheering on the boys. [That] was probably my favorite [part],” Blagg said. 

Both Poirot and Blagg thought running up the hill was the most challenging part of the meet. They also think that the course was not that hard, and it was what they were expecting. 

“There’s definitely challenging parts, but I don’t think there was anything that was more challenging than expected, [but] the last hill that we went on was super challenging but I was expecting to be pretty tired,” Poirot said.

The hill was most challenging to Poirot and Blagg because it wore them out quicker than they thought it would. 

 “I actually thought this course was easier than ones [we’ve done] in previous meets [but] there [were] some challenging hills we had to run up. Other than that, it was pretty easy,” Blagg said. 

Rush thinks yesterday’s meet went well, too. 

“[My favorite part of the meet was] hanging out with friends [and] celebrating after the meet,” Rush said.

Rush’s biggest challenge in the meet was starting off the first mile fast, which wore him out towards the end of the race. 

“We got out to a pretty fast first mile, and I got really tired by the end,” Rush said. 

Bunn also thinks that the meet yesterday went well, and he thinks that he ran a good race and got the time that he wanted. His favorite part of the meet was finishing the race to show the hard work he did in the race. 

“My favorite part is probably the ending where you get to do your final sprint and show what you have left and the race is over,” Bunn said. 

The challenge that Bunn faced was that he didn’t have enough motivation to run since the JV team had fewer people than the varsity team. Just like the other runners, Bunn also found running up the hill to be quite difficult.  

“It was a little more challenging to stay [as] motivated as I can [during] the race because there were less people in the JV race, and the hill was definitely hard,” Bunn said.