The HMSA Cross Country team is getting warmed up for another season of running without looking back. Last year, the team raced through the season without being defeated once and won the league. This year,  the boys went undefeated with a win/lose ratio of 7/0 as of November 5, while the girls seem to finally have met someone who could put up a challenge on their race to victory, with a win/lose ratio of 4/3 as of November 5th. The boys came out on 1st place, while the girls came out on 4th place. Both teams made it to the CIF Playoffs.

Coach Severns’ expectations for this year’s Cross Country team were very high, as he expected the team to give nothing but their absolute best effort to accomplish his team goal of winning as many games as possible. Although this is his first year coaching a cross country team, he has seen teams run on TV and hoped to use his experience at running to help the team with their goal of improving their skills together. When he was asked who was his favorite team player, he confessed that he “couldn’t single down just one player [because] the whole team was great”, and that he had seen some great leadership on this year’s team. His strategy to bring home another shiny trophy to show off at HMSA’s trophy shelf was to work with the team as a whole to ensure that “they improve together”.

As for the training’s rigor, Coach Severns confessed that he thinks the training is hard, but only every other day, just like everything we do at this school. He gives them “a hard day of training, [followed by] a lighter day of training”, because having an intense training season every day would put a big strain on the team members’ muscles. The team members, however, don’t feel like the training is too tiring, likely because they have more experience running than the average students who struggles with their mile runs. When sophomore Amabel C. was asked if she thought the training was hard, she answered that it was “not really that hard”. Junior Ramiro R., on the other hand, said that “at first, the training is hard” but then you get used to it.

Overall, the Cross Country team had a wonderful season this year, with the guys winning every single race and coming up on1st place and the girls coming up on 4th place on the league. Both teams gave everything that they had to win their races, which worked perfectly for the boys as they had a perfect score this season, the girls struggled a little more on their races, as apparently they met somebody who could keep up to their pace; however, the girls still came up on 4th place and made it to the playoffs, which is really good. Regardless of scores, the truth is that both teams had been running as hard and fast as they could to win their races, and not only did both teams come out on the Top 5 of their leagues and make it to the playoffs, but the truth is that every player in the team would outrun the average HMSA student in a mile run anyways, so congratulations to everyone in the team for their effort and their achievements. Go Aviators!