As Hillgrove’s fall sports begin to wind down, the cross country team is speeding up. During the first week of November (4-6), the Varsity Boy’s and Girl’s traveled to the first ever AAAAAA GHSA State Race. In the past, the State Meet was the farthest the team advanced in the season, but for their eleventh season, both the Girls and the Boys teams made history.
According to co-captain, Raegan Goodwin (12), “the girls got 6th overall, and our boys got 15th”, a significantly better performance compared to last season’s results. It took more than physical strength to finish with such impressive results. Raegan continues, “Towards the beginning [of the season], some kids aren't really sure what they want to achieve, but towards the end they have high hopes for the season.” Cross country is as much a mental sport as it is a physical one. Without the drive, the team wouldn't have come close to finishing as well as they did.
In preparation for the State Meet, the cross country team starts training at the beginning of the season. Co-captain Cameron Bensley (12) tell the Talon, “Going in the State Meet, we did a lot of tapering with our workouts. We had some high volume, high intensity workouts at the beginning of the year. As we approached the State Meet, we took mileage off of our workouts so we’d have fresh legs going into the Meet.”
Helping to propel the team to finish in 6th and 15th place, the team had to utilize their strengths including “a lot of upper class men that came up and had a good year for us”, and “a really good ability to make practices fun, even when we’re doing hard workouts,” says Cameron and Raegan.