Members of the Pirates cross country team headed out on their
initial run of the year Aug. 11, covering what will add up to
hundreds of miles they will run during the coming season.
“Basically, we are a young team even though we do have a number
of returning letter winners,” coach Bill Ambron said as he watched
his athletes gather and stretch their muscles for Aug. 11’s first
day of practice. “We continue to be a small squad and hopefully
some additional runners will join us as school gets under way. We
have a total of about 16 who signed up to run with us. Once again,
the majority of the team is boys. We should field a girls team as
long as all the girls we have out now remain healthy.”
The team will continue practice daily as its prepares for the
Aug. 23 scrimmage at Conifer and, later that week will compete in
the first meet of the season Aug. 29 when they travel to DeKoevend
Park in Littleton for the Morris Vogel Invitational.
The captain of this year’s boys team is C.J. Horan, a junior and
two-year letterman. He finished first for the Pirates in most races
last year. Other returning veterans include Joe Howard, Michael
Gabriel, Tyler Newman, Tyler Dowler, who will split his time
between cross country and football and Mike Snell who also will
play golf and run cross country during the fall season.
Alyssa Fellows captains the girls team this season. She too is a
two-year letterman and was one of the team leaders last season. She
is joined by returning letter winners MacKenzie Eddleman and Sofia
Rivera.
“The members of the team got together for informal conditioning
runs three times a week during the summer,” Ambron said. “There
were 15 to 16 runners at most of those runs. That helps a lot
because it means those runners are in pretty good physical
condition.”
He said the team should be OK this season and noted the focus
for each runner is to lower the time for each race and shoot to
establish a new personal-best time at every event.
Every high school cross country race is a team and an individual
competition. Every runner is vying to finish first and win meet
medalist honors. In addition, it is a team competition.
The high school cross country course is run over 5 kilometers —
3.1 miles — and during the regular season, a team can enter up to
seven runners. The sum of the points earned by the team’s the top
five finishers is the team score.
Returning letterman Joe Howard said he is looking forward to the
season.
“I kinda like to run and being on the cross country team gives
me something to do in the fall season and helps me get in good
shape to play basketball during the winter sports season.
Basketball is my favorite sport,” he said. “I saw how much the
conditioning I got running cross country helped me in basketball
last year. I came into the season in good shape and I had the
stamina to push myself up and down the court the whole game. That
was a real plus for me.”
He said the hardest part about cross country is going out on a
long run when you just don’t feel like running.
“But you learn to push yourself and make the run. I think that
helps build mental and physical toughness,” Howard said. “You put a
lot of work into getting ready to compete in cross country.”