�They�re used to doing well year in and year out,� said Tim Creamer, head coach of the women’s cross country team.
The team has been consistently finishing in the top five in their meets this year, with their best accomplishment at Davis and Elkins College where they achieved the third best finish.
However, this doesn’tmean it’s going to be a cakewalk for the team, which consists of fifteen runners this year – a high number considering only five to seven are needed to score – this season.
By John Fish,
Contributor
�They�re used to doing well year in and year out,� said Tim Creamer, head coach of the women’s cross country team.
The team has been consistently finishing in the top five in their meets this year, with their best accomplishment at Davis and Elkins College where they achieved the third best finish.
However, this doesn’tmean it’s going to be a cakewalk for the team, which consists of fifteen runners this year – a high number considering only five to seven are needed to score – this season.
�There’s a lot of good competition,� Creamer said.
The biggest of which are West Virginia Wesleyan and Alderson-Broaddus Colleges, the top two teams at the moment.
Also, conditioning to face these teams has not been easy for the girls, according to Caroline Jones, a junior.
�The workouts have been very hard. [Creamer�s] been really focusing on miles,� said Jones. And the miles aren’tthe toughest part.
�Our easiest day this season has been a seventy minute run with sprints at the end,� added Jones.
On top of that, the course they use to practice is a far cry from simple.
Without a home course, the team has been forced to use the fields near St. Mary’s Hall, including the large hill, for training.
Chelsea Trettel, a sophomore runner, says her goal for this year is simply �staying alive.�
Their intense training wasn’tenough for the National Catholic Cross Country Championship hosted by the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
They only managed to finish 25th out of 34th in the overall team standings, and 15th out of 22nd in the Division II race.
Even so, Creamer believes it was a good experience for the team.
�It was a nice meet for our girls to be a part of and have that experience of a championship meet,� he said.
Despite their hard work, some of the women on the team feel as if they do not receive the respect they deserve.
The chief argument for this is the fact that their complaints of having to cross a ditch in their course and requests for a plank to make this easier have gone unheard.
�For two years now we have been requesting a piece of wood to go across this ditch,� said Jones.
�The ditch is really dangerous and we just don’tunderstand why all of these other sports are having fields built and we can’teven get a piece of wood to safely cross a ditch,� Jones added
Though the competition is fierce and the team is without a home course, the team will move forward with high hopes of even better time records.
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