Cross country: Breaking records

There are many sports in SHS, but few involve as much self motivation as boys’ cross country.

Even though the cross country members are a team and work together, everyone has their own individual ambitions. Other sports focus on team scores, but with cross country, members can see more individualized statistics to assess themselves for overall performance and improvement.

Cross country members have personal records, which are recorded online. In fact, every time the members of cross country beat their previous record, an online website called xcstats.com updates their record. As a result, boys’ cross country members can see their records and constantly strive to beat them.

“[The website] says when you break your record and it will tell you your time. It’s really cool,” said sophomore Drew Bryan.

When they beat their previous record, they can feel a great sense of accomplishment at exceeding their previous limits.

Furthermore, cross country members also keep track of their running times on specific courses. This way, they can see if they improved on a specific course compared to the previous year.

Although beating their records takes tremendous work and practice, boys cross country members can feel lots of satisfaction from beating their records, making it all worth it.

“It feels really good [to break your record]. It’s nice seeing it on the website,” said Bryan.

So far there have been five meets for the boys cross country team this season; unfortunately, the last two meets conflicted with the newspaper deadlines and could not be covered.

For the first meet at Lynbrook, Saratoga didn’t do as well as it could have because of the heat, but the freshmen still got first place. There were three first palce teams at the home meet. On the third meet, only five members attended who all did pretty well, with every single one of them beating a previous record.

In the first three meets, 19 personal records have been broken, showing signs of improvement in the team. There are also around 26 runners who beat their score on a specific course from last year.

“The website definitely wants me to try that much harder in practice and be that much better in the meet,” said Bryan.

For these cross country members, the constant need for improvement means that there’s never a finish line for them.