This fall sports season, the Yorba Linda High School cross country has been improving ever since the summer camp. The four coaches, Head Coach Vidal (staff), Coach Tim (staff), Coach Merza (staff), and Coach Allison (staff) all help to push the team members to become the very best. They love seeing the progress and improvements made every season. Cross country could be considered one of the hardest training sports at Yorba Linda due to all the training the team goes through each week. On race days, the teammates love and hope to beat their person records at the cross country meets, it means all their hard work pays off.

There have been multiple successes made by the team. The girls mainly pull in the awards this year, but the boys still give all the effort they can to grab an award. At the Silverlakes meet, Siena Palicke (10) took first place out of the red division varsity race with a time of 17:27, all the cheering from her teammates helped push herself to grab that win. The girls freshman team has taken second place at multiple races just like the girls junior varsity team. The boys teams are still working hard and has almost grabbed third place at races. Coach Vidal believes some girls have a chance at going to C.I.F., but he hopes the whole team will be able to go, he also believes multiple boys will be able to go to C.I.F.

There is more to cross country training then just running for miles, there are multiple training techniques to cross country like running form drills, hill repeats, performance warm ups, speed trainings, mile timing, and more. Most of the teammates agree that hill repeats is one of the worst exercises they have to do. “Nothing is quite as bad except hill repeats,” said Kaylee Worrell (10). The team also has to remember the four paces: race, tempo, maintenance, and recovery. Coaches will tell them what pace to go before the runs, these paces are used for certain occasions like recovery pace is used after race meets. Cross country training is the most important part of being on the team, be committed to all the training.

The future’s looking bright for the Yorba Linda High School Cross Country team. There is hopefully going to be more wins for the boys and girls team at the next races. Don’t forget to cheer on the team whenever they go run on by, they’re working their hardest every single practice, especially during hill repeats even though no one likes it. This October begins championships for the team and they’re still working even