What do athletes love about running with the cross country team? From our interviews, it appears that the spirit of teamwork is the number one answer. True, cross country is a competitive sport, but teammates are not competing against each other per se. As each individual runner crosses the finish line, their rank adds to the team score, and the goal is similar to golf: lowest is best. Only the first five runners count, but other additional runners bump up the ranks and scores of other schools.

Our Lady Grizz runners, which include several girls from the former State Champion team, have been placing second right behind Idaho Falls this year.  Adria Roberts (12) says that that the season here has been really good so far in the teamwork aspect. She says that they have been pushing each other, and the practices have been really good. “One of the new girls, Ragan Hart (11), has been really pushing me. I want to have a better mental game and have more strategy in my races and do better. I know I’m already there physically.”

The boys, who have also experienced success at the City meet are Placing second behind Idaho Falls, including two individual runners, Elijah Sorenson (12) and Bryton Zohner (12) and Hunter Young (12), who medaled for JV at the prestigious Bob Firman meet in Boise. 

Ridge Wilding(10) said of his experience on the team, “I just  like the team, how we’re all good friends. Personally, I want to be number one next year, that would be cool. As a team, we are going to have some pretty fast kids next year, so we should be really good and do really well, especially if we train really hard over summer.

Zohner said, “I like the competition from the different teams and the team being together. This is my senior year, and I want to improve this year and get faster. As the fastest runner, I think that next year Ridge has the most potential and will do really well.