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The Believers!!

October 13, 2019

Hello HXC Community,

Flashback to October 6, 2018. This was probably one of the hardest days we’ve had at HXC. The girl’s team missed qualifying for state by 8 points and the boys missed qualifying by 10 points. In cross country, these are razor thin margins with only a few seconds keeping us from advancing. We told all our returning runners to remember the feeling that day as we would use it as motivation the following year. Fast forward to June when Endurance Camp started, and we reminded everyone about October 6th and how it felt that day to watch other teams celebrate while we watched. That feeling was going to be our fuel for the next four months as we embarked on the 2019 season.

This past week’s theme was to “believe” and do all the little things right in hopes it would add up to big results on Saturday. By simple, I mean eating right, getting plenty of sleep, hydrating, and keeping up with schoolwork. The team was relaxed this week as we tapered workouts, preparing for race day.

Going into race day, the kids were focused from the moment they arrived at Herget. We learned from past mistakes and were prepared for the task at hand. As we arrived at Bolingbrook, both teams were ready to lay it on the line. Girls were up first.

Girls have been on a terror the last few weeks. Every girl has seemed to find another gear, and we have been running great! With Olivia back from injury, I felt we were going to have one of the strongest 1-2-3 punches in the meet with our 4-7 runners trying to keep contact with them. When we hit the starting line, the girls were locked in and ready to go. I was confident going in that the girls could do well, but they blew my expectations away by placing 5 in the top 11 and all 7 in the top 25 to win the Sectionals by scoring 33 points! Girls were led by Abbey 3rd place (12:32), Kendall 4th place (12:33), Liv 5th place (12:37), Baylee, 10th place (12:50), Natalie 11th place (12:55), Sara 22nd place (13:24), and Isabella 24th place (13:26).

Going into the boy’s race, we knew it was going to be tough. After learning earlier in the week that Caleb was going to be lost for the season due to injury, a difficult task was going to be even be more difficult. We happened to be in one of the toughest boys sectionals in the state that included the returning state champions from Rotolo Middle School and the always strong Jane Adams from Bolingbrook. The goal was for the twins to start our scoring with a low number and then we needed 3 guys to step up and have their best race of the season. I thought if we could score 90 points we’d have a chance, and the boys delivered their best effort of the season to score us 81 points, which got us third place, just beating Jefferson by 8 points! Gio, Nathan, and Ashton really stepped it up yesterday and were big reasons why we advanced! Boys were led by Devyn 1st place (11:10), Ayden 2nd place (11:16), Gio 17th place (11:57), Nathan 28th place (12:16), Ashton 33rd place (12:26), Mason 35th place (12:28), and Dom 60th place (13:04).

Heading into ‘”State Week” the theme again will be to keep everything simple and the same. Now is not the time for athletes to change their diet, sleep habits, race strategy, etc. The “hay is in the barn” and all the hard work is done. We just need to focus on doing all the little things correctly and enjoying this last week of the season. Qualifying for state is incredibly difficult, and all our State Qualifiers should take great pride that they are now considered the “best of the best” heading into next week’s State Meet. We will depart for Maxwell Park on Friday after school and will be staying at DoubleTree by Hilton located at 10 Brickyard Drive, Bloomington, IL. 61701. I will have an official weekend itinerary on Tuesday at practice for the weekend. Finally, if anyone is looking for some HXC gear for state, we still have plenty of the neon RUNHXC shirts for sale for $12.00! They make for a great stocking stuffer too! Looking forward to watching our athletes competing on the last possible day of the season…..STATE. #runhxc #beelite