Girls Cross Country Struggles To Match Last Season's Success

COVID cancels the seasons of teams throughout the state, leaving a gaping hole for dominance as top teams don’t compete, HUHS’ girls cross country team is barely vying to fill this gap as a team while certain individuals are closer.

The girl’s cross country team had a state qualifier last season, which was regarded as a major success. This year their coach Mike Lane plans on having another. However, as a team, he says their performance has declined a little bit.

In response to the changes this year made by HUHS, athletes are facing a different season and new challenges.

“I think one difficult thing is team building and team interference like pasta parties, as individuals it’s fine,” senior Ella Merklein said.

The team’s performance matches this statement, Certain individuals did well and the Girls’ Cross Country team got 9th out of 10 teams.

Comparatively last year the Girl’s Cross Country team got 7th out of 9 teams at the North Shore conference meet led by a time of 21:17.

Senior Ashley Bartelt said, “Sometimes we get a little too comfortable and don’t go as hard as we always could, but only sometimes.” Their coach Lane has a different explanation.

Lane said, “They have not [trained] much over summer, which is why I think they have the decline.”

Merklein said that Covid made it harder to train as a team together, but did not affect individual training. She thought that COVID helped in some ways by allowing for extra time during quarantine for training.

In addition, runners face new challenges and changes. This year instead of having all the runners start at once, meets are often smaller and have runners take off in waves. In addition, masks are required to be worn before the race and must be carried throughout the race.

Bartelt says “I think it [masks] takes away our breath a little bit, more than it should.” She also says that “You have to have a lot of mental power to catch up there,” due to the wide spacing using the wave system. She hopes these changes will go away.

Merklein does not mind starting out at different times She has no opinion on whether the new system stays or not.

In response to the changes that were made this year, their coach is satisfied with the way the girls adapted.

“The girls did a good job adapting and responding.” Lane said.