From the countless hours of running around the same track to the tedious warm-ups, the cross country team has been preparing to achieve excellence for the 2016 season. Cross country is a sport that individuals run in courses that are outdoors and have natural terrain; each individual’s placement in the race is counted towards the total score of the team. The difference between the cross country and track and field is that the former has only one event, the long distance race, and the latter has multiple events in which individuals participate in.

   The Quartz Hill Cross Country team has been achieving great amounts of success since the founding of the school. The team has won the Golden League Champions consecutively for the past three years. While the boys and the girls compete separately, they practice together as a unit.

   Under the guidance of Coach Bierowicz and Coach Beck, the cross country team will be able to improve rapidly throughout the season. Practice usually takes place at the football field after school and ranges from 30 minutes to two hours long. The daily routine for all the runners is essential for success in the meets. On Mondays, track workouts are conducted to strengthen the dexterity of the body of each runner; one of the workouts includes sprinting for 30 seconds and then jogging for 30 seconds for 18 minutes.

   However, cross country runners participate in long runs, which are conducted on trails for about 60 minutes, every Tuesday to ensure that every runner has the endurance to withstand the race. Because the runners participate in such strenuous activities on Tuesdays, Wednesdays are cooldown days in which runners would just run around the Antelope Valley for about 30 minutes.

   To further condition the runners, Thursday’s activities are the main workouts in which the runners have to do much harder runs such as speed workouts. Similar to Wednesdays, Fridays are also cool downs, but competitions can also be held on Fridays as well. There is also practice on Saturdays in which runners are supposed to run on trails for about 65 to 70 minutes. This arduous training is conducted since the results show that this method of training works.

   Jon Favela, a junior varsity cross country runner, believes that this season the team will be ready to do well in every competition they will participate in. “I feel the team is really solid, I feel like we would win the League,” said Jon. With this mentality, it is likely that the cross country team will continue to achieve greatnesses during this year and more years to come.