On Friday Oct. 8, the boys and girls Varsity and jv cross country team completed one of their final meets of the season. The race was a 5k run that featured sophomore Devon Alexander doing the best out of anyone at North by coming in 4th place.   

“I placed 4th overall with a time of 17:48, so that’s really awesome,” Alexander said. “It’s a really nice confidence booster to do so well in any of our meets because it’s showing off that all your practice paid off.”

These last few meets are crucial for the team to fix any rooms of improvement they might have before state begins in early November. With runners from many different schools competing at Koch Park at once, the pressure was on the team to perform at 100% at all times.

“Between our two meets at Koch park and McNair we’ve had about 20 kids beat their personal record,” Coach Kim Martin said. “It’s not just by 10 seconds either, some runners broke their record by a minute, which in cross country is a big deal. I don’t know how many of them will make state this year, but next year is looking really good.”

With the stress of state and district runs coming up, the cross country boys and girls are still looking forward to see what the future of the team holds. As the team is a bit younger, this will be many runners’ first time running state.

“I mean the state run is what we’ve been looking forward to since the beginning of the season,” Martin said. ”I believe the McNair and Koch park meets show just how far all of our runners have improved in just a few months.”