Cross country is often considered an unglamorous sport that only loners and fanatics or someone keeping in shape while waiting for another sport in a different season can have any enjoyment doing. Let’s face it, how many kids today really want to run for eight or 10 miles every night after putting in a full day at school?
Well there are a group of students at both Bellwood-Antis and Tyrone, who have dedicated themselves to running cross country. The sport takes some getting used to most assuredly, with the constant pounding the body takes while running over all kinds of terrain, wet, dry, soft and hard and even some of the way on a normal track.
Bellwood-Antis coach Julie Roseborough has seen quite a bit in her 11 years as coach of both the Blue Devils’ boys and girls teams.
“We have a lot of boys who have run before,” said coach Roseborough. “If they keep working hard, there is every chance we can have a shot at a very successful season.”
The first challenge will come on Saturday, August 31 at the Big Valley Invitational at Indian Valley High School where e both boys and girls teams will get a taste of competition before hosting Tyrone on Thursday, August 5.
“The kids running varsity will be Aaron Bell, Will Edwards, Dan Himes, Teddy Keramidas, Jason Nedimyer and Kyle Shiffler, based on our time trials.”
Experience can be very important in a sport like cross country, knowing how to run and to be able to take the pounding of constant running for miles at a clip. Roseborough is happy with the experience factor on the boys squad.
“As far as experience, Corey Sweigert, Glenn Henry and Josh Wrywas have run before in addition to the starters, so we are pretty well established in that respect. We do have three new people plus another who moved into the district and will be on the team after he gets back from basics.”
B-A will have lots of experience in their top four spots, but will need to get some hard steady running from the others to solidify the fifth, sixth and seventh spots.
“They are working and getting into shape,” said Roseborough. “They need to jell as a team and get a good team feeling and pull each other along. You don’t get that in practice. That usually takes a meet or two.
We have a couple of seniors that probably will help us with leadership. I think Dan Himes and Kyle Shiffler will provide that, although Aaron Bell, even though he’s just a sophomore, the kids kind of look up to him because of the work ethic that he has. He works very, very hard at the sport. We have some other seniors, but Kyle and Dan are the seniors with varsity experience.”
While optimism runs high on for the boys, on the girls’ side the key will be how good the girls at the top can be, rather than consistency down the line and how quickly the newcomers can get in step, due to a very small and inexperienced squad. Coach Roseborough, and assistants Susan Nycum McCloskey-Nycum, who also helps with the boys, have just seven girls. To make matters worse, only two have any kind of experience at all in running cross country.
“With the girls, it is going to be a very slow process, explained coach Roseborough. “They are working hard, but with only two girls returning, we have to take it slow. In cross country, the runner has to take time to get accustomed to the pounding the body takes while running. You can’t do it in just the three weeks we have to practice from the time we start practicing until the first meet. We will even have to go very easy in practice the last couple of days before the Big Valley Invitational so they will be in decent condition to run in the tournament. You have to deal with injuries and getting their bodies used to the constant pounding.”
Ironically the girls’ team strength and weakness is exactly the same. The Lady Blue Devils have their top two runners in Allison Cherry and Rachel Meredith back from the 2001 season. It is always good to have you best athletes return for another year. The bad thing about that is there is no one else who has run before on the entire squad.
“Allison Cherry and Rachel Meredith have run before and we are hoping they have really good seasons. Allison in particular, has gotten off to a nice practice start. This is going to take awhile for the girls as a team because of the lack of experience. The girls just haven’t run at all before coming out for cross country this year and haven’t even been running this summer before we started practice.”
Both Bellwood-Antis boys and girls compete in the Mountain Conference in cross country.
