Head cross country coach Alex Holmes poses for a photo in his Clarke Central High School gear in the James M. Crawford Memorial Arena at CCHS on Aug. 24. Holmes is prepared to train his runners week by week by focusing on both the physical and mental demands of cross country. “The biggest misunderstanding with cross country is people think that you have to be a great runner — which is true, but the mental aspect of cross country is huge. To me, you’ve got to be mentally strong,” Holmes said. “What I mean by that is, once you start getting a little tired, once you start feeling like you can’t do it, that’s when you gotta kick it in your mind that you can do it.” Photo by Alexander Robinson.
Newly-appointed head cross country coach Alex Holmes joins the Clarke Central High School athletic department after coaching at Apalachee High School for thirteen years.
Newly-appointed head cross country coach Alex Holmes has come back to Clarke Central High School 18 years after graduating with the class of 1999.
“I was born and raised right here in Athens,” Holmes said. “I started teaching in 2005. I wasn’t coaching cross country at the time and I didn’t run cross country in high school. I got involved with coaching about six years ago. I just fell in love with it. That’s part of the reason it brought me here.”
Holmes is hopeful about the upcoming cross country season and what it will bring.
“The boys are gonna be good. As long as we stay healthy, we’ve got a chance of being pretty good. One thing I’m stressing is staying together and pushing each other and packing together during practices,” Holmes said. “The girls unfortunately right now have technically seven runners, so we’re kinda short-handed on the girl’s side. But we have some strong girls, and so I think the girls that we have are gonna give us a chance to make it to state for sure.”
Sophomore Lucy Yeomans, a runner now being coached by Holmes, is finding his coaching style more rigorous than those of other coaches she’s had in years past.
“He’s, I guess you can say intense. He’s really getting us to work hard and he’s giving us harder workouts,” Yeomans said. “When I first started running, my first coach was really into technique and how to run right. I think she really laid the groundwork. Last year it was more laid-back and this year it’s more like, ‘We signed up for cross country and we’re gonna work hard to go fast.’”
