Cross Country Sprints Toward Victory

A new season begins for Aragon’s Cross Country team and it is already shaping up to be one of the most successful years in Aragon’s history. Both the boys’ and the girls’ varsity teams are currently ranked in the top 10 of the 140 schools in the area based upon last year’s times.

If the boys’ varsity team manages to move up to the third place ranking and the girls’ maintain their fourth place ranking throughout this season, both varsity teams would have a chance to advance past CCS finals to progress to the California state championships for the first time in the history of Aragon.

Cross-country Coach Frank Hunt believes that the main competition for those top rankings would come from Carlmont and Half Moon Bay high schools. Although individual runners with extraordinary running times have attended the state championships before, this would be the first time for the whole Aragon team to reach the state championships.

“In the past fifty years, these are probably the two best (boys and girls) varsity teams [Aragon has ever had],” says Coach Hunt, optimistic about the varsity team’s chances to attend the state championships. Cross-country coach Bill Daskarolis cities the large number of strong junior runners on the team, with significant experience in high-level competitions, as the reason for the varsity team’s potential this year.

Some top runners of last year (and potentially this year) are Christian Pedro and Rory Beyer on the Boys’ varsity team and Lauren Croshaw on the Girl’s varsity team. Pedro agrees upon the team’s potential this year. He says, “The boy’s team is a lot faster [this year] … they are right behind me during workouts.”
In order to train for this year’s opportunities, available team members had already begun training over the summer with endurance workouts, running between 30 to 50 miles a week.

Coach Daskarolis says that he is working to train his runners for endurance first with long runs and resistance workouts up and down hills before working on speed. On an average day after school, cross-country athletes run between two and a half to eight miles after school based on ability, which Coach Hunt expects to improve substantially over the cross-country season.

The team has meets and scrimmages scheduled in a wide variety of locations – some longer, and others hillier – in order to help the runners gain experience. Croshaw and Pedro agree that the most important thing for strong runners to work on is to gain more confidence, an aspect of running that Croshaw calls “the whole mental game.”

Despite a high expectation of the athletes, Coach Daskarolis says, “the bottom line is to…have fun.” Coach Hunt adds that they expect all the runners to “be good citizens [and] do their best.”

Interestingly, the cross-country team’s first scrimmage ended up as a scrimmage mostly against themselves. The opposing team from Mount Pleasant High School had yet to clear most of their runners for athletics, resulting in only one member showing up to the scrimmage.

The big question of this season is whether the varsity teams will indeed advance to the state championships, which remains to be seen. However, based upon current standings and opportunities, the cross-country team is poised to reach their goal. The next league meet is on Tuesday, October 11 at the Crystal Springs Course in Belmont.