To be completely honest, Aubree did not want to participate in cross country. She definitely prefers the music/academic side of life and never considered herself any type of athlete. I loved participating in sports in high school, so we gave her the rule that she had to play "one sport for one season." She could choose the sport and the season. She chose cross country primarily because the team was large and did not cut anyone, and she'd heard that there was food involved.
Cross Country started with summer runs Monday-Thursday. Aubree missed a lot of them due to camps and trips, but attended all the practices she could when we were home. She hated every single one of them and admitted she didn't try very hard. Despite her attitude and lack of effort, she still improved, and by the time the season officially started at the beginning of September she could jog three miles.
Tahoma's cross country team/program is huge; they had 120 kids (boys and girls) on the team! They dwarfed every other local team.
They started off the season with hosting a fun race in our city that brings in a boatload of other cross country teams from across the state and even a couple from Portland. It was a 3K relay race and even involved running a portion of the race through the lake.
It was a fun way to kick off the season.
Once the season started, Aubree's attitude slowly started to shift. The night before every race, the parents host a spaghetti feed. As a huge fan of food and friends, the spaghetti feeds quickly became one of Aubree's favorite things.
It didn't hurt that pasta, bread, and desserts rank high on her list of favorite foods.
Or that she had a fun group of friends with whom to eat and hang out.
Beyond the food and friends, Aubree's internal competitive nature started to kick in. Each race gave her a chance to improve her personal PR and beat other teammates running near her pace.
Her JV team, being enormous, provided ample opportunities to inch forward. By the end of the season, she'd improved her PR from over 31 minutes to 26:01.
The daily intense practices, tiring runs, and long Saturday meets definitely took their toll. By the end of the season she was really, really tired, but enjoyed the season enough to decide that she wants to run again next year!
More importantly, her experience in cross country changed how she looks and thinks about herself. She now absolutely considers herself in the "athlete" category (as long as no balls are involved, ha!) and knows she can do really hard things. Running three miles now seems "not that big of a deal."
Thank you cross country!
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