Despite not taking home the championship title, the JC boys cross country team left everything on the course by taking first place in all of their conference meets.

A sickness ended up being passed around the team the week before championships, causing a weaker performance from all the runners affected.

“During championships everyone was still sick, and we ended up losing by five points,” said Coach Michael Monaghan.

However, he added that “[JC] was definitely the best team out there” the day of the championships. “If our top five runners weren’t sick, we would have won.”

Despite the unfortunate timing that resulted in a loss at championships, the team remains proud after showing up for a tremendous season.

Team captain Andrew Brown said, “I am very proud of the growth our team has had this last year. It was awesome to watch the physical improvement of shaving off personal times, and our knowledge of race strategy improved drastically since the beginning of the season.”
Andrew proved to be one of the team’s top runners this year, with his fastest 5K time being an impressive 16 minutes and 15 seconds, averaging a little less than five and a half minutes per mile.
Being a senior, Andrew will graduate from JC this year, making this cross country season his last in his high school career. He leaves the team with some parting words, saying “I am very grateful for the opportunity to run with JC and for Mr. Monaghan’s coaching. This team has extraordinary runners, with immense potential, and the best is still yet to come.”

Like Andrew, many others on the team had incredible personal seasons, one of them being first-time cross country runner William Root. Will, a sophomore, decided to run in the fall rather than play soccer like he did during his freshman year.

“What attributed to my successful first season of cross country was my hard work outside of practice and racing,” said Will who usually ran six to ten miles on the weekends.

He plans to run for the cross country team again next season and will prepare by training over the summer. He said his goal is to finish a race in 16 minutes and 20 seconds.
After finishing this season with incredible results, Coach Monaghan reflected on the team’s success.

“I think that there was a lot more competition among the runners on the team this year, which led to them doing more mileage and running faster in practices. They just kept wanting to improve.”

Looking ahead, Coach Monaghan believes next year’s season will be just as successful. “Even though we lose three seniors, we have a great group of underclassmen. We have some really good freshman prospects, too.”

JC looks forward to seeing these runners come back even stronger for next year’s season, and for the time being will watch as some of them move from the rugged terrain of a cross country course to the track.