I have heard stories of how amazing the cross-country team runners are, whether it was Chase Daniels making it to state or just how fast and impressive it is for them to run 3.1 miles. So I began to think of how different it is for the six freshman members Aubrie Hindman, Lilly McCoury, Max Cooley, Kaleb Hart, Mark Keene, and Daniel Norman. I wondered how different high school cross-country is compared to the middle school cross-country team. I asked a couple of the freshman XC runners two questions each: “What was the highlight of their season?” and “How different is high school compared to middle school cross country?”
I first asked Coach Jennifer McKee what she thought of the difference between middle school and high school XC. She said, “Having coached middle school cross country and now high school cross country, the biggest difference I see is the base mileage. In middle school, races are two miles, so our weekly mileage stayed between 10-15 miles, while in high school, our races are 3.1 miles (a 5k), so the weekly mileage required of our athletes is 25+ miles.”
With the little bit of information I got from Coach McKee, I can see there is quite a difference between high school and middle school practice alone, not even including meets. High school meets are even further, which makes practice harder.
The first runner I asked was Max Cooley. I asked him the question, “What was the highlight of your xc season?” He replied, “Running Coaches’ Hill at the Dover course.” I also asked him how different the experience between middle school and high school was. He replied back with, “It is a lot more fun because we run more and have more people.”
Next, I asked Aubrie Hindman about her highlight of the season, and she said, “Going to the Factory of Terror after regionals.” I also asked her about how different the experience between middle school and high school XC was and she said, “A more fun environment, upperclassmen were so much fun to be with, and I got to know people in my grade better.”
I then asked Daniel Norman about his highlight of the season. He said, “Being able to run with the team at regionals.” I asked him why that was a highlight. He was an alternate for regionals, but he got to run one last race for a kid who was sick. I finally asked him how high school XC compared to middle school XC. He said, “We had bigger teams, and the distance was longer to run.”
In summary, what I am collecting from the freshman cross-country runners is that they like the high school team better than the middle school because of many reasons but the main reason is they prefer the longer distance for them to run. I think it is very impressive to be able to run an average of 25 plus miles a week and then run 3.1 miles in 16-20ish minutes at their meet on Saturdays. I also think it is super impressive how many students went to run in District, then go to Regionals, and then send Chase to States for a finish of 20th out of 215 runners!
