Cross-country at McAuliffe is becoming a popular sport, but should you join it? We interviewed three kids this week and we got different answers about cross country from all three of them. This is J Dub’s second year of doing cross country and he said, I feel like there is a sense of belonging and community. I like it because I like to run and you can talk with your friends all the time. The only thing I don’t like about it is too often and it gets tiring after a while.” Meanwhile, Mari said a few different things. This is her first year, and she said, “I like cross country because I am always active and you can hang out with your friends. The only thing I don’t like about doing cross country is that it takes forever to start because there are so many kids and you have to do attendance for 200 kids.”

At McAuliffe, all the people we interviewed love cross country because they get to talk with their friends, they like running, and they are always active. This is good for people because they have chances to interact with people that maybe they haven’t met yet. Also if kids play other sports it will help because they might run a lot and doing cross country they can run faster in that sport like soccer, baseball, or softball. Cross country is an excellent sport for anyone. Some people join to get out of class sometimes, and yes it is nice to do that, but you are committed to it so you have to do it. We recommend this to anyone who loves being active, hanging with friends, running, or just having fun being out and about. 

We interviewed Ms. Thompson, the cross country coach at McAuliffe, and she told us that cross country was more popular than ever, with 200 kids joining. We asked her why most kids do cross country, she said, “Well, some kids like to run, but many do it because their friends do it.” This is true, cross country is an excellent opportunity for you to be able to run with your friends and allows you to make new ones. Emma Henki, another student says, “I joined to run with my friends, and I also like to run.” We asked Ms. Thomson if people skip practices, and why, and she said, “Usually if they don’t show up, they don’t stay on cross country, but most people skip because of sports like lacrosse and soccer. We also asked  what she likes about coaching, “It’s fun,” she said, “So are the meets, and I love running.” It sounds like overall, cross country is an excellent opportunity if you have days when you don’t have sports, or you don’t do a sport and you want to run, and get exercise. 

Running has many benefits, like heart health, and lung health, and keeps you in shape very well. If you do other sports like soccer, where you run a lot, cross country builds up endurance to make you be able to run longer distances, and go faster when you run. Not to mention, meets are fun, you can compete and beat your highest running time and others’ running times. Overall cross country is a fun (and healthy) way to bring people together and be your healthiest best self.