Oct. 29, 2014 By Christopher Clapper

In a warm up to the WIAC Championship meet on Nov. 1, the men and women’s Warhawks cross country teams ran at the UW-Oshkosh course in an effort to get to know the track and support their teammates.

The top 12 men and women will score the points for each of their teams next weekend, with the scores being totaled at the end to determine the team winner of each race.

With most of the top men and women already set to run for the conference meet, Friday’s contest was for the rest of the team to set personal records and allow the top 12 an opportunity to get ready for the postseason races.

The meet began with the entire team running together, but finished with the top 12 running full speed in order to get ready for conference the following weekend.

This allows the entire team to build camaraderie as well as help with pacing.

“It’s kind of a nice team bonding thing,” head coach Jeff Miller said. “The top kids aren’t racing all out, but they’re getting a good workout. Plus, they’re getting a nice feel for this course.”

The runners said they
appreciated the experience as well because they were not only able to help themselves by learning the course, but also help their teammates who they do not normally get to run with.

“Those of us who already qualified for conference (the top 12) did the first half of the race running alongside our other team members, who were running it as a real race,” junior Mary Kate Bernier said. “We could encourage and push them, which was fun.”

Both the men and women have shown great improvement this year and have their sights set on a better conference finish than last year.

With the men finishing 7th a year ago and the women 8th due to injuries and illness, the teams said they can’t wait to hit the course this postseason.

“We had kind of a tough year last year as far as team placement is concerned,” Bernier said. “We’ve been doing a lot better this year, and lots of people have stepped it up, so I think that we can do really well this year,” Bernier said.

With Miller looking on and a relatively healthy and injury free team, the Warhawks will look to run their best race of the year.

“Our first goal for this year is to do better than we did last year (at conference),” Miller said. “I think we should be able to do that if we run the way we are capable of.”