Boy’s Cross Country on to Corpus Christi
From Left to Right: Luis Juarez, Duncan Coleman, Calvin Graves, Wyatt Wiggins, Head Coach Mary Beth Gallagher, Ty Sexton, Reid Crownover, (not shown)-Adam Wiewel
Canyon Lake’s Boy’s Cross Country team will be off to the races this week at they will embark on their second year of running the Regional race after finishing in 3rd place last week in Sequin.
“As a whole, everyone is running better but so is the district,” Head Cross Country Coach Mary Beth Gallagher started. “We knew we had to step up our game this year.”
Graduate Nash Opperman led the crew last year for the first opportunity to cash in on qualifying in last year’s district meet. Opperman is now running in Schreiber at Kerrville after the successful season.
“We had boy’s finish ahead of Nash’s (Opperman) time last year and they did not even place in this meet,” Coach Gallagher said in amazement. “So we have accomplished more as a team this year.”
The athletes for CL span the whole age range, but there are some younger students that have brought there ‘A’ game to this season of meets.
“We are roughly in the same ball par age wise as our district schools,” Gallagher said. “This team is deeper and our alternate guys are running faster and have better times than previous years, so that tells you we have some good talent coming up.”
Canyon Lake was a perennial bottom school up until this time last year and now two year’s of placing third gives this team some new found notoriety and with that higher expectations.
The Hawks don’t want to just be at the Regional Meet, but now this team is focusing on raising the bar with this coming time against more schools in Region IV.
“We are realistic in what we can do but this year we would like to be more up to the middle of the pack,” Coach Gallagher said. “We ran our worst meet last year at the Regional Meet and this year we are going to run our race….we are learning how to run smarter and we will build on this experience.”
Running cross country takes a lot of different scenarios as each race will present different situations during the race that the runners will need to assess when to make a move either based on weather or what the participants are creating during the time on the course.
“Every year we will get steady growth in this program,” Coach Mary Beth Gallagher said excitedly.
The water is rising for Hawk sports as the Cross Country team continues to be one of many Hawk teams that have started their climb and hoping to become a force that other schools will notice.
Go Hawks and have fun this week in Corpus and congratulations!
