How do you measure success in cross country? It’s a question that can’t be easily answered. A majority of sports, the score shows a clear “winner and loser.” You can obviously find the positives and negatives for how both teams played, but the score doesn’t lie. Cross country has team scores, individual scores, team times, individual times, placing, medals, personal records, ulterior motives, etc. It comes down to the spirit and attitude of the team and the culture that cross country brings. Cross country promotes positivity and finishing the race strong. Each team has their own measurement to what they feel is “success.” A team may have gotten last place, but each runner hit a personal best. A team may score in the top three as a team, but they didn’t run to their times or race strategy. A team can be eyeing for state or making sure all of their runners finish. It is a complex relationship between team success, individual goals and runners either having good or bad days. Some runners may fall ill, injured or mentally just out of sorts. Some kids who have been racing for more than 10 weeks find their groove and hit a PR. This complex relationship played out at the last conference race of the season at Holland Christian.

For us, West Catholic, we would say we had a successful day! The girls took 4th place to a close score against Holland Christian for third. Congrats to Maggie Duba and Lily Lesarge on getting All Conference Honors! Maggie, dealing with stomach pain, knew she had to fight through it and stay in the top ten for scoring. She finished 9th place on the day! Lily has maintained in the top 20 the whole season which helped her achieve All conference and a season’s best (20:57). Ali Junewick who has been up and down with injury for the longest time, ran a PR race (20:55) with a 12th place finish! Nice comeback race Ali! Abby Druelle finished next on varsity (21:35) and Claire right on her scent (21:37). That was Abby’s season record and Claire’s PR of 38 seconds! Nathalie Strockis hit a season record of 21:54 while trying to stick with her teammates throughout it! Maggie Mckeiver was the 7th varsity spot, hitting a big PR, 41 seconds overall, and 33 seconds for the season. Maggie has had a great progression hitting times at the right parts of the season! Lainey Roth ran a 22:57 and although she would have liked to run a better race, we have the utmost confidence she can, and finish the season on a strong note! Good racing varsity!

      In the JV race, Audrey Mckeiver had the biggest improvement on the day and season!  She was more than 1:40 faster than her best race! Mckeiver girls were on it!! Brenna Olewinski (25:01), Bree Hoffer (24:50) and Lauren Ignatoski all hit season records! Anna Richmond ran 29:08, and has one more race at regionals to leave it on the course for her senior season! Ava Brown finished strong to get her best of the season with a 34:44! Way to keep improving Ava! 

        It comes down to this week, leading to regionals on the 30th. For some of us, this is our last week to get that PR, hit those goals, and end with confidence. This week is about fueling the desire to compete well on Saturday. The work has been done, there's not a lot of practice we can do to prepare. It's about “controlling in between the ears” to show up in a big way. If some of us want to make it state, we must run for each other and know each place and time counts. Let's not tell ourselves after Saturday, "well I guess, I could have given more."