The cross country team finished with top rankings at the ECC meet at Ripon, and 14 total runners are moving on to sectionals.
“Everyone has improved since last season, in terms of time, strength or even mindset. Everyone has improved in some way. It’s shown in our record,” Coach Roberto Lara said.
This improvement has been apparent in not only practices, but it has also been shown in the meets themselves.
“We are scoring low which is a good thing, the lower we score the better we do. We’ve won a number of meets on the girls side, and the boys have been lower in numbers but are still performing well, scoring better in meets,” Lara said.
Junior Thomas McCarthy has also noticed his own improvement from last year, which may be due to his summer practices.
“In the summer I did a lot of running, did some strength training at the gym. Success is really built in the summer,” McCarthy said.
The girls cross country team placed first at conference despite the runner up school, Kettle Moraine Lutheran, having girls place first, second, and fourth.
“Statistically, when you have people placing that high it’s a high probability they’re going to win. So the fact that we beat them was statistically improbable,” Lara said.
Junior Audrey Shattuck is one of the seven girls going to sectionals.
“I feel like I did very well coming off of a two-week break from an injury. I’m very proud that I got an 11 second PR (personal record) after not practicing for two weeks,” Shattuck said. “I’m very proud of myself and our team for winning the ECC conference. It’s something I have always wanted to do and worked really hard to get, too.”
The last time the girls cross country team won a conference meet was nine years ago in 2015, and for the boys it was 19 years ago in 2005, but they placed seventh this time.
“Our boys ran well by their own standards and Thomas got runner up, first time running under 16 minutes, a lot of people ran their fastest times,” Lara said.
Sectionals is now fast approaching and practices are going to have to be changed so the runners are ready to perform their best.
“I will actually modify my practices this last week to be lighter in mileage and toughness. We are just trying to maintain our fitness this last week of practice,” Shattuck said.
They will be competing at sectionals this Friday, October 25.
