My Identity

Cross country is primarily the only sport I play as of now. It is a very intense and surprisingly a very crowd oriented sport. It has also become a huge part of my life. Everyday after school and on weekends, we're running. Whether it be a race, intense workout or just an easy 5 miles, we're always dedicated and never stop. Our whole team bonds a lot during the season and we're all friends. Right when school ends, we have conditioning in the mornings up until near the end of the summer where we start mandatory practices and it gets more intense. We then go to cross country camp. This my favorite part of it all next to meets. I met a a lot of new people and made new friends during camp and also made so may new memories. It's a time to run a lot but to also learn and have lots of fun. During this summer I went to my first cross country camp. There were some great things and some not so great things. One of the not so great things was the water. It tasted like eggs and sulfur and we all tried to stay away from drinking it as much as possible. One of the really good things is after every two different grades would face off in making a chant which was usually a song rewritten with words involving cross country. Every meal the coaches judge on who they think the winner is and they keep track off who wins the most rounds, either the boys or girls. Also, we have cheer battles where the two genders create cheers that we yell after every meal and who ever doesn't have a response to the cheers loses. Overall cross country camp is a very fun experience.

     All of our work over the summer comes down to meets. For each meet we run a 5k and the first 7 runners for the team score. The lower the score, the better. Meets are very exhilarating. At every corner and everywhere you go are people yelling and cheering you on and it gets very intense. The cheering and yelling is actually very motivating and really helps you speed up and want to go faster. This makes meets really fun. I love meets because I can spend time with friends and cheer on the team. Cross country is a very great and physical sport and I'm proud to be part of such an organization that is Jackson Cross country with over 240 runners putting us as one of the biggest teams in the nation.