Cross Country Runs Into the Season

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ILLENA GUITERREZ STAFF WRITER
The cross country team had a meet on Wednesday Sep.27. Before an invitational meet or any meet for that matter, the team gets together to do stretches and warm up. Based on last year’s season, the team needed a larger number of constant practice. Since the season started this year, the team has shown growth and improvement so far.
“Overall they have improved from last years season, it showed growth from the performance shown in the runs.” Coach Sandra Rodriguez. Said
The team had another meet on Sep.15. The meet had a little rough start but they eventually got into a steady momentum and ended the meet strongly. The growth of the players have shown rapidly since the last season ended. The improvement from the team was demonstrated through their time from last season where the team had difficulties in achieving their goal time.
“ Most of us improved a lot from the previous races, and our times have improved as well,” Serena Duenas.Said
The team often attempts to encourage each other in practices and competitions. The team is judged as a whole by every player’s individual time. The way the team gets scored is by adding up the first five runners who cross the finish line, ordering the teams from lowest to highest, and the judges or officials award the teams with the lowest amount in total. If the team has the lowest score that means that they are the winners of the meet.
“ I’m looking forward to the varsity girls winning or becoming league champs, and our boys advancing to C.I.F preliminaries.” Coach Sandra Rodriguez Said
The Cross Country team and Coach Rodriguez has a goal for the varsity girls to go to the CIF preliminaries which are statewide races from the California Interscholastic Federation. The only way you can get into the CIF preliminaries is by being a member, or a student of a private and public school that’s associated with the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District). To be eligible to go into the CIF races, a team needs to runners who reach the eligible times or by having an entire team who won League Champions. The races are always split into boys and girls and do the races are only for Varsity athletes. This year, the team is very confident that they can proceed to the CIF preliminaries this year and hope to the beat Shurr to achieve League Champion status. The Cross Country team’s next meeting will be the Central Park Invitational on Oct. 7 at Huntington Beach.