Members of the Clarke Central High School cross country team practice strides on the track at Billy Henderson Stadium. The team’s workouts will decrease in intensity as the season comes to an end. “Our bodies are gonna feel a lot fresher and better and faster for the region race, so I think a lot of us are excited to hopefully get a lot faster times,” junior cross country runner Samantha Brodrick (second from left) said. “We have been doing less hard track workouts, we’ve been doing less pacing and more speedwork, and we’ve just been keeping our endurance up on some long runs.” Photo by Audrey Enghauser
On Oct. 23, the Clarke Central High School cross country team will participate in their region meet.
The Clarke Central High School cross country team will compete in their region meet at Unicoi State Park on Oct. 23. For many runners, this meet will be their last of the season.
According to head cross country coach Mollie Sherman, the team’s workout regimen for the weeks leading up to the meet reflect the team’s focus on qualifying for the state meet on Nov. 1.
“We’ve been following a pretty consistent regiment of doing a mixture of long runs, speed workouts and hill workouts with some active recovery runs in there as well,” Sherman said. “We’ll start to also incorporate some tempo runs, and then after this week, we will start to scale back a little bit in order for their bodies to actively recover before the big race.”
To qualify for the state competition, a team must be in the top four teams in their region. The top seven runners from both the girls’ and boys’ teams, along with one alternate runner, will compete.
“Loganville has been really successful in the last couple of seasons,” Sherman said. “Beating them will be tough, but we’re going in with open minds, and (we are) excited to compete on that day.”
For junior cross country runner Samantha Brodrick, the upcoming region meet is bittersweet.
“We have a good amount of seniors, so we get to experience that last race with them and that’s always really fun because we do have a good solid group that’s gonna be leaving this year,” Brodrick said.
As the season comes to an end, Sherman feels the region meet gives runners motivation to finish the year strong.
“It seems like everyone is pretty laser focused on the same goal (of qualifying for the state meet), which is exciting to see everybody working towards that,” Sherman said.
