After coming in fourth place at the Regional meet on Nov. 1, the girls’ cross country team qualified for States after a long season of training. The team took 11th place at States on Nov. 10, with senior captain Allison Huschke coming in 11th.
According to senior captain Lauren Truwit, the team’s greatest victory this season was their first meet, the Ragged Mountain Running Cup on Aug. 28. “It’s a relay race at Panorama Farms, and our top team got first…We finished with a pretty good time and we packed a lot of people into the top 25 individually,” Truwit said.
Other meets the team raced in this season included the Fork Union Invitational and the Great American Cross-Country Festival, where they received seventh place, and the Oatlands Invitational and Albemarle Invitational, where they received sixth place.
Huschke came in first place at the District meet, where the team came in second. “The hardest part about cross country is definitely the mentality; it’s very difficult to compete against yourself in a tough workout or race and tell yourself to push even harder after thinking about stopping,” Huschke said. “The most rewarding part about cross country is the satisfaction. When you run a good race, you know that every tough workout and mile in was worth it.”
Huschke said that team has “an endless amount of energy and I would say everyone takes pride in being on the cross country team. Most people don’t call ourselves a team, but rather a family.”
Truwit agreed that the team has good energy. “I definitely feel like energy-wise we’re really, really good at encouraging each other, especially when we’re racing…We’re just a huge family so we have a really good spirit,” Truwit said.
The cross-country team has had multiple spirit days throughout the fall. “Having nearly 70 girls was hard to organize in the beginning of the season, but we got the hang of it. Spirit days are awesome because it is so easy to spot who runs cross-country in the breezeway; everyone usually dresses up and there are so many of us,” Huschke said.
Truwit said that the strength of having so many runners “is that we can have so many girls and we can really get cross-country building for years to come…[also] strength is definitely our family aspect.”
Sophomore Emily Farabaugh said that the team does not hold an official tryout or cut girls, so “anyone who wants to run can.”
Truwit said that size can be a weakness because “sometimes our practices have to get split on the two different places, which is kind of hard to do.”
According to Farabaugh, due to the number of runners “it’s just too many people driving into Panorama [for practice], so on certain days some girls run at AHS while others are at the farm.”
The team’s main goal for the season was to “build up the younger runners because seven or eight of the top ten runners are graduating next year [class of 2013],” Huschke said. “I think we achieved this goal because we have two really fast incoming freshmen who are eighth graders now and many newer runners have stepped up. Our varsity is constantly changing because of our depth and most of that is contributed to the younger runners.”
The younger team members have multiple opportunities to run throughout the season. “We have a lot of meets where everyone can run, including Cup, FUMA, Albemarle invitational, and an occasional tri-meet,” Farabaugh said. “However, there are several like Oatlands, Great American, and Districts, Regionals, and States where it is limited to the top 25 or the top 12.”
Farabaugh thinks “a lot of people run cross country because of the social aspect. I mean, they’re obviously there to run, but with so many girls, all of whom are super nice, it’s a lot of fun to run with other people versus on your own.” She said that running cross-country has been “a terrific choice.”
According to Truwit, the most rewarding part of cross-country is “being around all these people who are striving for the same goal…so probably the most rewarding part is finishing a race with your teammates and knowing that you did the best you could and that your team is better because you finished.”
