As one of the few FHC sports having a shared practice between girls and boys, the guys cross country team is at a disadvantage before they even put their spikes on. Even though the girls and boys do the exact same workouts throughout the week, the gap between the girls and guys success had widened quite a bit.
The girls cross country team has ran it’s way to state for the third year in a row, winning first at multiple meets along the way. The boys have set their goals somewhere else as they have had to rebuild their team after many of their top runners graduated this past year. Both teams have a right to be proud of themselves as they’ve definitely put in the work to get where they are.
These athletes had put in the work before the season began as many of the runners had preseason practice without the guidance of any coaches. With the preseason workouts came a successful season because they were already in shape on the first day.
Junior Carter Berg who has been on the boys cross country team for the past three years gave his perspective of the boys preseason workouts as opposed to the girls.
“I would say that the guys team could use a better preseason in the summer,” Berg said. “I think during preseason we could work harder, and I think that our performance would be a lot better.”
Four-year cross country runner Senior Ezra Bailey also gives a lot of credit to the offseason in respect to his overall success in the season.
“I think that if you kind of split up your season, like in the offseason, just run a ton of miles trying to build an aerobic base, and then just get into faster intervals throughout the season, then tapering towards the end,” Bailey said.
Besides preseason workouts, the regular season practices consist of the same workout for both the boys and girls teams. Since the boys and girls teams are doing the same workouts, the amount of training transfers over to meet day disproportionately. In a way the girls are practicing like a boys team and because of this, it seems the setup of practice leads to the girls team being more successful then the guys in competition.
Junior Reese McDevitt has been involved in cross country since middle school, and she has seen the correlation between practice and success.
“I think the guys team needs to run more, because they run the same [as the girls] and girls bodies are different than the guys,” McDevitt said.
McDevitt also acknowledged how the boys are having to focus on rebuilding.
“The boys I think they’re going to struggle because they have so many freshmen and that’s really all they’re going to have,” McDevitt said
Even though the boys cross country team has a lot of ground to cover, everyone has worked very hard to be a cross country runner. Every single athlete on cross country has earned their spot as a FHC runner.
