High school sports are always thought of as something to do for exercise or competitions, or just to do something. But the most underrated aspect of high school sports is the friendships and bonds you make with people. Many athletes join a team not knowing anyone, and they often feel left out. For cross country, that’s not the case. Conditioning for cross country starts in the summer, for incoming freshman they have to run with a group of old strangers, not knowing that those strangers will become their teammates and then their brothers.
For many runners, they are often scared in summer conditioning like freshman Luke Bouman, who didn’t really know anyone there, but that leaves room for the upperclassmen to leave an impact and make the team stronger.
“When I first joined the cross country team in the summer, I was scared, and I knew no one. I always thought I would just run alone, but a junior Tony Foster introduced himself to me. I was so inspired by him and his work ethic, and he’s funny, but He’s just a brother to me now.” Said
That’s the duty of teammates, to be a good teammate means to be a good person including everyone makes you form tighter bonds but it’s not just freshman that feel this same way even juniors too junior Charlie Pella has been with the program for 3 years being with the same group of guys for 3 years makes you share many memories and laughs you’ll never forget.
“Running with these guys brings you together as teammates, sure, but also much more. At the start, I would just talk to them during practice, but then we just started being friends. The nights you spend on video games and cracking jokes during warmups, you become much more than teammates, you become brothers.” Pella said,
But there’s always an underrated aspect of cross country, and that’s the suffering that comes with running. During intense workouts, things get hard mentally, and sometimes you just feel like giving up, but that’s when your teammates have to step up, sophomore Brody Busing says. Those moments of suffering are the moments you get closer with someone.
“When I was a freshman, I didn’t really know anyone, but being with this group of guys experiencing the same pain of workouts together really just makes you a lot closer than you think,” Busing said.
