It’s 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning — race day. Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ is blasted through the speakers in junior Sydney Bahr’s car — an abrupt wake up call to the fellow C-teamers, junior Kate Mitchell and senior Sara Benson.
As the girls sing along at the top of their lungs, senior Hayden Wylie is just waking up. He is in a bad mood this early in the morning, and he can hardly get out of bed. As he makes his way up to school for the bus ride to Haskell, he blasts his pump-up gangster rap jam, Maad City.
On the bus, the “scandal squad” sits next each other. Benson, Bahr and Mitchell created this squad which consists of the girl runners at the bottom of the C-team. Mitchell and Benson sit together directly across from senior Neely Atha and Bahr.
On the bus behind the girls, Wylie and the majority of the guy runners fall asleep on the bus.
The scandal squad knows that they will not make Varsity or JV — they enjoy being on C-Team because it doesn’t have as much pressure on them as varsity does. During a race, they even tried to make friends with the tractor driver, who is required to follow the last person in the race. The driver declined.
“We can joke around and laugh at ourselves during cross country because everyone knows that we’re bad,” Mitchell said. “You just kind of have to laugh and go along with it.”
Because the girls are at the bottom of the list, they joke around with other runners about how they finish at the end of the pack. During Mitchell’s freshman year, her parents made bets behind her back about how long it would take her to quit.
“They knew I hated running, but I had to do it,” Mitchell said. “I don’t like to quit, I like to follow through with things I do.”
When the bus arrives at Haskell, the team tent is set up and the majority of the team snuggles together on top of the tarp in the cold weather. As it gets closer to the race time, the C-Team jogs the course for their warm up. Following that, stretching takes place in a group circle.
After their pre-meet stretching, the girls line up in the starting box, and they run out for the traditional huddle. As they group together with all their hands in the middle, Benson leads the chant, “Good, better, best! Never let it rest! Till your good is your better and your better is your best!”
The starter of the race stands out away from the box. With a red flag in one hand and a gun in the other, he moves his arms steadily upwards until they reach the top, where he shoots the gun to start the race.
“During the race we like to wog,” Mitchell said. “Wogging is a mixture between a walk and a jog, and we never walk in a race.”
Benson, Mitchell and Bahr run every race with each other and plan to have each foot cross the finish line at the exact same time.
“Running alongside my friends Kate Mitchell and Sara Benson really makes me push myself and keep up the good work,” Bahr said.
As some of the girls are starting to finish their 4k, Wylie knows the start of his race is nearing. Before each race, Wylie prays and takes three ibuprofen to make the race easier. After that, he makes his way to the starting box.
The boys begin their warm-up, running out 20 yards with an acceleration, and doing high-knee skips back. As they are finishing the drills, they run out for a team huddle. Everyone makes a hook shape with their hand, and the boys chants “Ru-fi-o! Ru-fi-o! Ru! Fi! Ooooh!” The upperclassmen explain that, even though the race won’t be fun, it will be over in less than 30 minutes, as well as giving some pointers about where they need to jump over a ditch. Following the huddle, the C-team does butt-kicks back to the box, ready to start the race.
“Right before the guy shoots the gun, I’m normally pretty nervous,” Wylie said. “After that, I get going and set a good pace to finish the race with.”
Upon finishing the race, Wylie can tell if he had a good or a bad race.
“If it’s a good race then I throw up because that means I gave it my all,” Wylie said. “If I still have energy I don’t feel too good about it because I could have used that in the middle of the race to catch someone or go faster.”
To the C-team, cross country is not just about running. It’s also about the team dinners on Friday nights, the Quick Trip runs after practice and the pre-meet horse runs before the meets. Since cross country is the largest team sport at East, with 156 runners, many friendships are made with each other.
“When you are running cross country, you can be as competitive or not competitive as you want to,” athletic secretary Gayle O’Grady said.
The cross country team has five practices a week, in addition to a meet on Saturday. Usually, C-team cross country runners run the same route as varsity. Although they are not as fast-paced as the varsity athletes, they still have fun being a part of the team. Bahr looks forward to cross country practice because she can run with her friends.
“You don’t have to be the best at something, you just have to have fun,” Benson said. “C-team athletes run with a smile on their faces instead of a pained look that varsity has.”
To Wylie, it’s also a good way to connect the upperclassmen with the lowerclassmen. Many of the runners join their freshman year because it’s a good way to stay in shape, but call it quits within the year.
“If you do something long enough you just don’t want to quit,” Wylie said. “I figured I might as well finish up all four years with cross country.”
Leave a Reply