It has been an extraordinary season for the UHSSE cross-country team. We placed second in the league for both girls and boys and we brought back the trophies to prove it. This was the first time that the girls team placed, and we won second and the boys were two points away from winning first place in the league. Everyone improved a lot this year and were able to achieve new personal records. “At the beginning of the season we had Sid and Emmett running about 23 or 24 minutes and I think that Emmett broke 20. Sid got really close to breaking 20 as well. Jethro broke 20 and got very close to breaking 19 even and every race she ran Catherine got a new school record. We had people like you and Haniya who were new runners which was great. And overall I think that we just had a great season.” said captain of the cross-country team, Tanmay Thaker’24.
This season the team’s overall goal was to make it to states and to place in the conference. We almost won the conference and made it to states. “I’d like to win, winning is always important but the most important thing for me is to sort of grow the team and continue just to develop the passion of running in the kids. We didn’t do quite as much growing the team as I wanted to do but I think everyone who was there really made great strides” said Coach Brown. The team met their goal for the season and everyone had a lot of improvement.
When we asked some of the runners why they chose to do cross country in the first place or why they would choose it over other sports. Most athletes had just wanted to try any sport when they first started and chose cross country, and they were lucky enough to have picked something they would turn out to love. Some others liked cross country even before they came to be on the team at UHSSE. “I ended up enjoying cross country because it was something I had already started getting into and it wasn’t something which you needed an already learnt skill set for.” said Siddharth Krishnan’24. Many people said that it seemed like a sport which was the most open to letting people join and then teaching them as they go.
Most of the athletes plan to continue running cross country or track and field in college. “I actually would really like to do cross country in college even if it’s for a D3 school. I really love competing and would love it if I could continue doing it,” said Catherine Hockenhull’25. We wish the best of luck to all of the athletes on the team who want to pursue cross country in college and hope that they enjoy it every bit as much as they did at UHSSE.
A common thing which the athletes and coach loved about the team was the chemistry of the team and how even though it’s not a “team” sport in the way how we run at different paces and we run for ourselves, we were every bit as connected as a team could be. We shouted as loud as we could when we cheered for each other and in the end we all crossed the same finish line. Somehow in this world we managed to find other people who love the same hobby, sport, or even passion as us. So even though we were apart we went through it all together. “We are not an actual team sport because we aren’t competing as a team but we still function as a team in the sense that we all still help and teach each other and are very open with each other. We don’t judge people for wanting to join but just let them join and have fun.” said Krishnan.
