The cross country team came home victorious after an 11th place finish in the Chile Pepper XC Festival in Fayetteville, Ark on Sat.
Junior John Arnspiger broke a school record with a time of 16:00 and placed 34th overall out of 658 runners. All of East’s top five boys runners finished with a time under 17:06.
The Chile Pepper XC Festival is one of the biggest cross country meets in the nation, with schools from five states competing in it, including Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas.
The girls team finished 29th overall. According to junior Carolyn Kinney, the girls team did decent, but hopes for improvement in the season to come.
“The coaches have really been stressing to us the importance of sticking together as a pack,” Kinney said. “And we were spread far apart this time”.
While the girls team is still working on becoming more cohesive as a team, the boys team had a successful race at Arkansas.
“This race was especially fun because it was out of town, and we had a lot of success with our boys team,” Arnspiger said.
The Chile Pepper XC Festival provided a good opportunity for the cross country team to gage themselves against teams they don’t normally compete against.