This cross country season has not been a typical one due to the changes made by COVID-19. Senior Evan Moore, despite these changes, has kept a positive mindset and is having a great senior season.
Even though most sports have been cancelled, postponed, or unknown if they are even having a season at all, cross country is sticking through the pandemic while staying safe and healthy. After talking with Evan, I was able to pick up some details about how the team is going through these unique times.
With quarantine being a huge factor in everyone’s life this past year, Evan Moore spent a large amount of time preparing for this season. He had a lot of extra time on his hands to train and work on lowering his PR.
“I spent almost all of quarantine, actually all of quarantine running and training.”
During the practices, the team is now split up into groups based off of their times. This way the team is socially distant, but the warmups and runs are the same. You have to run with your masks, unless you are at least six feet apart from other teammates and runners. When you are with teammates or run past others, you must put your facemask back on. During races, you have to begin with your mask on, but can take it off until the end of the race where it must appear back on.
“It is not that bad especially when you are able to take it off when you are spread out. Sometimes it’s hard depending on how fast you are running”
“It’s a sacrifice to wear a mask because it is harder to breathe especially with the air quality recently with all the smoke in the air, sometimes it’s not the most fun to wear a mask when running.”
The meets are a lot smaller this year than have been in the past. The larger meets include a lot of different teams and the whole team cannot run in the same meet anymore.
“This past Wednesday, we were having a varsity race, and then yesterday we had part of the team go to a race in Colorado Springs, and then another meet for the rest of the team. So it has definitely been split up.”
LHS is having a different look on school this year than it has in years before. Evan Moore is staying positive with these changes adapting to the hybrid schedule and using the time advantage to practice even more for cross country. He is able to plan out his day, get the sleep he needs, eat the proper amount of nutrition, and be ready to run for his meet.
This season is more stressful for the whole team to showcase their potential in minimal meets, especially for seniors, who plan on running in college and potentially after college. The next goal for Evan is to work on getting a scholarship for cross country.
“I’m not sad the year is like this, it’s kind of a bummer we have to wear masks all the time and cross country has to be the way it is {with masks and social distancing} especially because our team is one really big family and really close together. It’s hard to be distant because we are just a big family.”
Both the boys and the girls teams have a great start to the season There have only been a few meets with a majority of them being cancelled due to COVID-19, but Evan Moore is still having a great season so far. In his first meet he PR and placed second overall. With the pandemic, it is unsure for the team members what race they are running in until closer to the time of the meet, with there being a limit on how many runners there can be. This upcoming season is more play by play since some meets are being cancelled, added, and only fractions of the team compete at the same time.
“I’m glad I can have a season. Just glad cross country was able to happen. It’s been really nice being able to practice with the team and not alone.”
Even though the season was condensed, Evan and the team still plan on running all the way to state. They are still unsure how it is going to look.
