Written by: Deanna Figueiredo

The GC cross-country team hosted the first race of the season at the Council Farm course in last week’s Bobcat Invitational. The race yielded a fourth place finish for the women’s team and a second place finish for the men’s team.

For the women, junior Katherine Yost finished in first place in a cross-country meet for the first time in her collegiate career. “My goal was to get top ten, so getting first was more than I ever could have hoped for,” Yost said. Four freshmen on the women’s team finished right behind Yost.

Coach Steven Cary, in his second year with the crosscountry teams, believes the freshmen will only get better. “We have a lot of room to grow. The potential of the team is arguably, if not the best, one of the best [of any] teams that we have ever had at this school on the men’s and the women’s,” Cary said.

Cary was pleased with the results and thought that this was a great opener for their first 6K since most of them were not used to running that extra 1,000 meters. The night before the race, he reassured them that they had the strength to run this race. All they had to do was focus on their goal.

“We had a girls’ team goal to finish in the first half at least or top third of the whole group like each team, we did that,” Yost said. “We got fourth. If we got sixth, it still would have been in our goal but we got fourth so that’s even better.”

The men’s team did not have one individual that won the race but still had a strong showing. “[We had] a solid group of seven guys that finished in the front of the field,” Cary said. “I was really pleased with that and just how we worked together as a team.”

Strength in numbers was really the main goal for the men’s team. They were split into groups at practice and trained together for this race. For many of the runners such as sophomore Collin Silliman, it was their first 8K race, but running as a unit gave them comfort.

“I think the biggest takeaway from the meet was the fact that the freshmen class is just really good,” Silliman said. “I think the freshmen are really key in this.”

Looking towards the future, Silliman and Cary both thought that the overwhelmingly great support at this race is what the teams really need to help continue their success.

“We had an unbelievable amount of support from the other athletics,” Silliman said. “It was a great environment, it pumped me up and it pumped up the team too.”