The 2017 cross country team shifts their focus this year to rebuilding their boys team and to progressing their girls team.

On the female side of the team, they have five of their varsity athletes returning this season.

“One of the biggest things [to look forward to this season] is seeing how well the girls do because we have our top five coming back from last year,” cross country head coach Kim Martin said.

The returning varsity girls are Heidi Hauptman, Mackenzie Pugh, Claire Huss, Paige Hercules and Hannah DeGraw. The boys team is a bit of a different story, having lost 16 seniors from this year to last year, two who were state competitors, the guys are struggling a bit.

“With all the seniors leaving last year, we only had one returning varsity runner so the team is looking a lot different this year,” Ben Jamison, captain of cross country, said. “The challenge was having enough people that were actually running at the varsity level.”

Through this initial struggle of loss and attempting to amp up the team back to the level it was in years prior, that goal has pushed the runners to get to where they need to be. This attitude has also helped enhance their already hard working and dedicated culture.

“We’ve had a few guys that have overcome that and saw that there were open spots on varsity and really stepped up how they were running and they are looking really good,,” Jamison said.