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The boys and girls cross country team traveled to Oatland Plantation, Oct. 31 for their regional meet. The boy’s team placed first in the district meet and the girl’s team placed second. Both teams automatically qualified to compete in the regional meet.
“I’m really happy with how I did at regionals, I ran the best race of my season,” senior Matthew Rush said. “Our team also did good, but not quite good enough to move onto states.”
The boys team placed fifth at the meet. However, junior Kaedon Howley and senior Andrew McMichael qualified for states individually.
“Making it to states was mixed emotions for me because the team didn’t qualify as a whole, but I’m still really excited and thankful for the opportunity,” McMichael said.
The girl’s team on the other hand placed second overall and freshman Brooke Saunders placed first individually meaning the whole team will advance to states.
“We’ve been working hard this whole season and tried to get into the right mental state to know we had the chance to place in regionals,” senior Annie Poirot said.
Similar to the girl’s team, the boys also began training early on throughout the whole season to ensure they had a chance to succeed in regionals.
“To get ready for regionals, we started running this summer and continued to amp up the training until about two weeks before the race,” Rush said.
Many regions are automatically able to compete in regionals.
“For our region, we automatically advance to regionals, but as far as expecting to make it to states, we knew we had a pretty good chance going into it, but still had to try our best,” Poirot said.
Many schools attend the regional meet, but it does leave some pressure on the team.
“There was definitely higher competition, but it was good to race against people we don’t usually race against during the normal season,” Poirot said
Before preparing for regionals, both teams had a strong team dynamic over the season.
“The team has a really good atmosphere and a lot of the guys enjoy practices and hanging out with each other,” Rush said.
Throughout both teams, there is always a sense of encouragement for one another.
“Our team’s dynamic has been great, we all support each other and encourage each other. We can do anything we set our mind to and we did it,” Poirot said.
Despite going into the meet with a positive determined mindset, Poirot still felt many nerves leading up to the meet.
“Some setbacks were that it was a little intimidating and nerve-wracking knowing we had pressure on us to place and qualify, but I think that ended up helping us more,” Poirot said.
