For most of my life, October has been synonymous with cross country. I don’t even consider it to be really cross country season until the weather turns cool. Our season ended yesterday so I wanted to put up a quick recap of the final month.
Our first home meet went over very well on October 4. We were lucky that Cheney State Park had some neat trails already set up, so with a little mowing we were able to create a really fun course for the athletes.
The Central Plains League meet the following Thursday was a little bittersweet. Both our boys and girls squads finished as runners-up, the first time we’ve ever managed to finish top two on both sides in the same year. But the boys were just four points away from what would have been their first ever league title (the CPL CC meet dates back to 1993). The girls were second by virtue of being one of only two full squads in the league this year (this is definitely not the norm – there were five last year), and even we struggled to get there, not having had five girls finish since the first meet of the season.
At regional we were able to take (nearly) full advantage of our recent drop to class 3A, qualifying two boys and a girl to state. Our boys squad finished 4th overall, one spot away from qualifying, our best regional finish since 1996. Fortunately, it was a distant 4th, which made it easier to swallow than our league runner-up. We were also decidedly ahead of the 5th place team, so I really felt we held our own. Fast-forwarding to state – I felt even prouder of our boys when the three teams that beat us at regional finished 2nd, 3rd, and 4th overall. It was nice knowing that even though we haven’t qualified for state since 1986, we would have gone toe-to-toe with most of the teams there this year and likely could have qualified at one or more of the other regionals.
We didn’t have anyone medal at state, though our top boy managed his best time of the season on what was the toughest of the season. The highlight of the state meet was just the experience itself for everyone. This was the first time Cheney had ever competed at Rim Rock in Lawrence (our state location having usually been Wamego). The kids that went up the night before had fun just exploring a course that was unique from the others we are used to seeing in south central Kansas.
Here’s a picture from the Oxford meet in September that I feel just about sums up our season:
