peted in track sectionals last ….
peted in track sectionals last school year and will likely form the core of this year’s cross country squad.
“I think seeing some of the success they’ve had in track will translate over to cross country,” Novak said. “It’ll motivate them to hit some of these workouts harder and get better.”
However, he also notes that there will likely be some growing pains, especially early on in the season.
“I know there’s going to be a learning curve,” he added. “For at least half the season probably, until they kind of get used to it and understand what a race feels like. Challenges I can see are just being uncomfortable doing some longer runs that they aren’t used to. We just started doing some four mile runs and that was pretty new to most of them. So dealing with that and possibly some injuries because they haven’t ran this much before would be my biggest concerns, though hopefully we won’t have any of that with how we’ve been structuring their workouts and their miles per week.”
Cross country is also very much a sport of mental fortitude, where runners must try to overcome fatigue and push themselves past what they believe their limits to be. It’s a change in mindset that Novak also says is different from track and his athletes will have to make that adjustment as well.
And while there will certainly be some things for this team to overcome as the season progresses, there are a lot of good things that Novak has seen so far from his team.
“They are really eager to learn at this point,” Novak said. “You can tell that they want to get better and faster, and to do those longer distances. Already seeing how far some of them have come from last spring, where some couldn’t even run a mile without stopping and now they can run three or four miles. That build up is motivating them to try to get better each and every day and they’ll see those improvements over time.”
He also likes the group dynamic that his team has developed. The group will work hard, but they also like to have fun, and juniors Cruz and Flores have taken on leadership roles.
The new Falcons team had their first meet of the season at Pittsville last Thursday. Cruz posted a time of 33:01.8 to lead the Falcons and placed 54th overall. Right behind her was Valeria Aguilera-Hernandez, who ran the course in 33:02.1 and placed 55th. Molitor was the third runner in for the Falcons, taking 58th place with a time of 34:21.1, and Flores rounded out the Abbotsford lineup with a time of 35:02.6 and taking 60th.
The Falcons next meet is scheduled for September 1 in Marathon, with a start time of 5:05 p.m.
