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Unlike football and volleyball, cross country is not a sport that attracts many spectators. Regardless of its anonymity, the team has done well in practices and races so far this year.
“We fly under the radar to some extent; we don’t play games in front of a crowd generally speaking,” said NS cross country coach Bill Bedford. We host only one race kind of in the area, but we, like two weeks ago, ten days ago, we had our home meet, and there were 844 runners from almost 40 different schools. It was epic, it was huge.”
Though cross country does not at- tract a large amount of attention, the team has experienced significant success. Over the past few years, the girl’s cross country team has progressively grown and improved.
“This year we have a really good team, our top few runners are really good, so we’re hoping we can do well at state,” said NS senior and cross country runner Aubry Cook. “It’s super nice to have a team that can stay together and two of us are graduating, so we’re hoping we do well.”
When Cook first started running cross country on the then small girls team, it was just an experiment, not at all as important to her as it is now.
“When I was a freshman, it was basically like me and one other girl, so it was just like competing against myself,” Cook said. “It was something that was kind of just a thing I was trying out, and now it’s something I’m dedicated to, and something that I’m focused on. It’s like a big part of my life. it’s crazy how big it’s become and how important it’s become to me, and I also have a team now that I love and care about and want to win with.”
The increase in runners and the overall experience of the girl’s team has helped them improve how they compete with other schools. This year, the team has performed well in their races and, according to Bedford, will continue to do so if they keep working as they have been.
“I would say the girls are ranked probably in the top three in state for 3A classifications; they’ll move on to state,” Bedford said. “If we stay healthy and run the way we have been, then I think they’ll easily advance to state and we’ll see what happens there; they’ll be very successful at region.”
The girl’s team has grown over the years, but the boy’s team has remained relatively stable. Though the team hasn’t experienced a lot of growth, they are doing well on both a personal level, where a lot of their focus is, and as a team overall.
“Right now we’re going on a personal level, but as statewide … right now we’ve been staying at beating Juab and Delta, and region’s coming up and if we keep that up we’ll actually be able to go to state,” junior Tezra Fisk said. “That’s what we’re hoping to do; the team itself is doing pretty well.”
Though the boy’s team has experienced some setbacks, such as the loss of last year’s runners, they have been working to rebuild their team, and according to Bedford, they are likely to fulfill their goal of qualifying for state.
“I am actually quite proud of the boys. We lost at least three of our varsity runners last year including … probably the top two, the two fastest,” Bedford said. “It’s been a year that we’ve had to rebuild and bring in a couple new boys, and you know our goals are to qualify the whole team for state. And again, I think that looking at the numbers and the competition, I think we have a very good chance at doing that.”
This year, the team has been focus- ing a lot of their effort on improvement. According to Fisk, though the team has improved largely this year, they will continue to progress and do even better next year.
“So this junior year. I’m getting faster times … but the senior year, we’re going to do even better,” Fisk said. “With that betterness, we’ll succeed. A lot of kids don’t think the boys’ team is going to do good, but I want to prove them wrong.”
To Fisk, cross country is largely about improvement rather than comparison. As the team gains experience and constantly improves their running speeds, they become a better team and a better competitor.
“Cross country is mostly about running, but it’s also trying to break over that mindset,” Fisk said “When most people are running, they feel like they’re too slow and they compare themselves to kids that are way faster than them. To be honest, I didn’t do that great my sophomore year, but every single race I tried to improve. I think that most people have got to look at it in that way, that improving instead of comparing themselves to a superfast time.”
As each runner becomes faster and improves, the entire team improves. To Cook, that is one of the best things about cross country. The individual nature of running makes it a sport that can be done throughout life.
“One of the cool things about running is you can do it your whole life. It’s not one of those sports with a team and stuff, you can just continue running your whole life,” Cook said. “Honestly I didn’t ever think that I would do cross country, I was one of those people that’s like, ‘Oh, I could never run,’ but I would say everyone should just give it a shot because you think you can’t, but once you start it’s like, I mean running sucks, but once you do, it’s actually really fun.”
