On Saturday, Sept. 20, the Cross Country team competed at the Wingfoot XC Classic, one of the largest meets in the southeast. For the first time in history, they qualified for the championship races. Qualifying for the championship races is very hard and takes a lot of effort. Over 100 schools enter varsity teams in the meet and only the top 25 get selected. Cross Country Coach Nicholas Widener ‘09 explains the process for getting in.
“So they look at averages from the season, past season, and kind of how a team is advancing,” Coach Widener said. “I think that they’ve looked at the past performances of both teams and feel that both of our teams, our boys and girls teams, would add to the championship field and that they are running the kind of times that belong in that championship meet.”
The championship races are always held at night, unlike the other races, which are held in the morning. Racing at night is a fun spectacle for runners on the team. Max Campbell ‘29 was excited to run at night.
“That’s a new experience for me,” Max said. “I’ve never run a night race before.”
There are lots of things that could lead to team improvement. It could be changes in training methods, new people or changes in diet or recovery. Amidst the improvement in the cross-country team performances, girls’ team captain Calleigh Kirshner ‘26 cites the supportiveness of the team as a contributing factor.
“I truly believe that our teamwork and how closely knit our team is the reason why we made the championship,” Calleigh said. “Obviously, we hit a qualification time, but our supportiveness of each other was huge.”
Calleigh was excited about the prospect of running in a field more competitive than the previous years she ran at this meet.
“I was really excited to be running with the best teams at that race, and be able to run at my favorite meet at nighttime,” Calleigh said.
The goal, according to Calleigh, was to continue passing opponents and beat certain teams.
“The varsity girls’ goal was to pass as many people as possible between each mile checkpoint,” Calleigh said. “We were attempting to beat Milton [High School] and McIntosh [High School].”
On the boys’ side, members of the team were very surprised that they made it. Chris Alexander ‘26 had thought they needed to hit a time goal they did not get, but they still qualified for the race.
“They [the coaches] said we needed to go 17:15 average, and did 17:29,” Chris said. “And we didn’t really get close, but I guess it was still enough.”
Chris was hoping for the team to climb the state rankings after the race.
“We’re ranked 24th in the state, ranked 5A right now,” Chris said. “Yeah. We have to get that up.”
Since then, the Boys team has shot up to 10th in 5A and the Girls to 11th.
Widener was excited for both of the teams to race at night at such a big meet. He has seen the night races multiple times, and it was time for Woodward to run in the meet.
“It’s such an exciting environment to race at night like that, so even though Woodward hasn’t raced in the nighttime race, I watched them a number of times, and Atlanta track club does such a nice job of just pumping up all the runners,” Coach Widener said. “And at night, the energy is even higher because the way that the spectators are running to look at everybody on the course, with the lights and the announcing and how they do the team scores, they’ll show the teams’ scores during the race as it’s going on on a big screen, so it’s this huge team environment where they pump everyone up.”
***
The editors and staff of the butterknife do want to note that the author of this story is a member of the cross country team.
