by Samuel Abbas | staff writer
Cross country boys and girls have respectively placed 1st and 3rd at the cross country district meet. The top seven from each boys and girls team are moving on to regionals and have a good opportunity to qualify for the state meet.
“We as a team have done a lot of work to get here, we’ve been doing everything we have to do to make it to regionals and now we’re finally here and states the goal,” junior Nick Dingman said.
Over the years, cross country has become more of a family than just a team. Together they have been to regionals every year and have grown in both their accomplishments and as a team.
“Our team goes every year to regionals but I feel like we’re growing because we lost some people form last year and this still let’s know that we still have a good growing team,” senior Emily Bandy said.
Regionals are shaping up to be one of the most competitive meets in the past few years. A new course has been replaced with the old course and looks to be more of a challenge for the runners.
“I’ve been to regionals every year but this it’s different because it’s made it more open to go to state so it’s definitely a lot more competitive than it has been in the last couple years and the actual course will be different this year,”Bandy said.
In order for the cross country team compete and accomplish the results they need to move onto state, runners need to enter with their heads held high and have the results they expect in mind.
“We need to have the right mindset and stay humble. All of us need to come with the right goals in mind to do the best we can as a team and hopefully we will qualify for the state meet,” Dingman said.
There will be a very competitive environment to qualify for state at the regional meet. Everyone knows what’s at stake and will all be competing with state in mind.
“We’ve always pr’d, we always ran well and it is very competitive at regionals. The course is hard, it’s a great course and we’ve always done well there. There are going to be good teams ready to compete and our team has grown because of that so hopefully we will do well,” coach Nancy Almaraz said.
