Last year’s cross country team was phenomenal. With both the boys and girls cross country teams placing top ten in state and Nolan Hoffman earning a first place championship in state, head coach Steve Parsons hopes to keep the momentum going with new cross country athletes who are motivated to strive for their absolute best this upcoming season. 

 “We feel great after last season, it was the best overall in Mead cross country history,” said Coach Parsons.“We feel prepared. We have a very different team this year, but we’ve had a lot of recent success and believe in our training and racing program because the results show that it works.”

Just like the rest of the community, Coach Parsons is looking forward to this upcoming season and hopes this team will be even better than last years phenomenal group. Even with a different team dynamic, the encouragement and confidence that emerged last season is bound to carry on between coach and player and keep the momentum up and rolling despite the loss of some outstanding senior athletes.  

“Since we graduated a great group of seniors, we need to work on getting the new young runners to buy into our program and stay healthy,” he said. “My coaching staff — Coach Garcia, Coach Loberg, and Coach White — do a great job of getting kids [interested] and working hard. We [lost] a lot of incredible seniors, but we know what we’ve got to do to experience success.”

Hopes are high for the cross country team. Even with a refresh of players, this year’s cross country team will only continue to develop and produce good habits over the course of the season. It’s apparent that the coaches have done a fantastic job of preparing new runners. All signs are currently pointing towards success and new runners are sure to bring their A-game to impress their coaches. Even still, some improvements can be made within any team, and Mead cross country is no exception.

 “The team needs to work on encouraging [teammates] to work hard for one other. We have a lot of new runners that don’t know each other well yet.” Said Coach Parsons. 

With this being the most major area to improve on, it is easy to see how talented and incredible this upcoming team is. As the season develops, it’ll become clear that simple strengths such as team bonding and encouragement can become the key to a state championship.

Thanks to the passionate efforts of the coaches, the MHS cross country team has only improvement and encouragement running their way. The team’s confidence and determination will keep this winning momentum going and bring success to the season. Cross country is running for gold here, and you don’t want to miss it.