This Past week the Herrin Tigers Cross Country Team were getting ready for their first meet of the season, but they met an unexpected problem. Due to the extreme heat that had been going on that whole week, their first meet was completely canceled, in addition to all of their practices that week having to be rescheduled for later in the evenings; however, the team used this to their advantage.
Despite being disappointed about the cancellation of their first meet of the season, it gave the team the opportunity to be able to practice even more, and become even better before the first meet.
Head Coach Dusty Mallow said that, with the extra time they were given, they were going to “practice even more, you know that’s what life’s all about, it’s just keeping at it.”
We also asked Coach Mallow if they had a good turnout of new runners this year, after which he explained that “The hardest part of getting new runners is really kinda selling the sport because it’s a tough sport, I dont know of any sport that’s entirely pain.”
The team experienced a decent turnout of new runners this year. Coach Mallow commented, “The hardest part of getting new runners is really kinda selling the sport because it’s a tough sport. I don’t know of any other sport that’s entirely pain.” Cross Country usually sees a pretty small amount of new runners each year, especially brand new ones, but this year they got more runners than they have in the past.
Many of the runners stated that they were feeling good about this year’s season, and that they believe that they have a very good team that’s capable of winning a lot of meets this year. Coach Mallow was also very confident in the team’s ability to win meets this season and leave their absolute best out on the course.
Coach Mallow wanted to give a piece of advice for new runners who might be thinking about joining the team: “You’ve got to give it a chance, Everybody who starts out their first day I always tell them, it’ll be terrible, you wanna stop, you wanna give up, but you gotta keep at it, and if you keep at it, a lot of you will realize how great of a sport this really is.”
