The Mt. Pleasant girls cross country team has had a pretty good season, especially based on the fact that they are a pretty young team. The team has sixteen girls, and eleven of them are underclassmen. So they were not expected to be very strong, but they proved everyone wrong. About half of the team has made personal records this year and more are soon to come, because in cross country you train so that you can be the best in the last two weeks of the season.
This year the girls got a new coach, Mr. Hicks, who is the AP Government and AP Comparative Government teacher here at MPHS. This was his first year coaching high school cross country. In the past he coached middle school cross country, high school track, and football. He said that coaching this year was challenging but he had lots of fun, and his daughter is a freshman on the team so that made it even better!
This year the girl with the fastest time is freshman Rhianna Armstrong, with seniors Katy Zimmer and Summer Terpstra close behind her. The team’s best meet was the Alcayner meet at delta college. It was a two mile race instead of a 5K which is what they normally run. Coach Hicks made a bet with the team that if they could all get a personal record, or beat their previous season average then he would get the team pizza. The girls worked really hard and reached the goal and were able to celebrate after the race with that pizza!
(Ellery Boyle)
The overall goal for the team is to have everyone run their best on the same day, it hasn’t happened yet but they hope that it will at regionals which is next Thursday. The conditions of the course have a large effect on how the girls run, they run best on flat, stiff ground with cool weather. When the ground is spongy they sink into it on every step, so it adds up to lost time in the end.
The girls are hoping that they can all run their best at regionals and qualify for states. They said that they don’t expect to qualify so if they don’t they won’t be too sad but they still would like to. The biggest challenge for them will be getting over the stress of the race because it’s such an important one, but since they are such a tight knit team they can work together to overcome the stress!
