Last Tuesday, Oct. 24, the varsity cross country girls team competed in the regionals race in Corpus Christi, Texas. The team placed 18th out of the 24 teams there.

“The course was flat compared to other courses we’ve run, usually they have more hills,” junior Madeline Jones said. “We definitely weren’t used to running courses like this.”

The start of this race was very narrow, which made it harder to get out fast.

“About 100 more girls were with our team all squeezed onto the line,” Jones said. “We ended up in a bad position where we all got stuck behind slower people.”

One thing that sets this regional course apart from others is that it finishes its last 100 meters on the straight away on track.

“The last 100 was on a track and made it a really strong finish,” Jones said. “You knew how much was left and it felt like a track meet, everyone sprinted it in.”

This is the first time in 7 years that the girls’ varsity cross-country team has advanced to regionals.

“It didn’t feel real like we weren’t gonna actually be racing the next day,” Jones said. “We were doing a jog of the course and it was just all so nerve-racking.”

The whole team worked hard to make it to regionals this year. This year the team completed harder and more difficult workouts compared to last year.

“There were a lot of hard workouts this year that really paid off in the end,” Jones said. “My mentality is run hard or die hard, you know like leave everything out there because you only live once.”