SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Silver Creek’s Cross Country team is halfway into their season and they have performed exceptionally well in meets and worked hard during practice this season.

The Cross Country team coaches are Coach Kasberger and Coach Chan. The team is also coached by part time assistant coaches who are in college. Currently the team has gone through three different cycles of difficulty for practice called cycles. The cycles are different ranges of distance where the higher the number of the cycle the more miles there are and the length of the run. The cycles range from 1-3. Cross country athletes are also encouraged by the coaches to sign up for invitationals if they aspire for more competition and practices on free days. Invitationals are races that are held at different locations and athletes have to drive to the location at a certain time according to their race time. So far invitationals have only been on weekends since the rest of the week the team has practices and meets.

Practices consist of a warm up lap around the basketball courts, baseball fields, the stadium, and the football field. Cycles one and two always do warm up laps, while cycle three they won’t always do it. They then do several leg stretches and head out in three groups to do an exercise run. Groups are set up in A, B, and C depending on the ability range of the runners. Currently, the coaches have trained the team to cycle three. Cycles determine the level of difficulty athletes are trained to a certain degree. 

After doing a warm up lap, the team starts an exercise run as a part of their practice plan, that ranges from 1.5-7.5 miles depending on the cycle. Depending on the groups, the coaches will then decide afterwards how many warm up laps runners will do as a cool down, unless they don’t do any. After the exercise run, the team gathers together to stretch. If the cycle is three, the coaches will have athletes do an  E.M.O.M, every minute on minute, workout for abs.

Jeffrey Nguyen, a freshman at Silvercreek, spoke how he felt about cross country’s cycles and if he would do it until senior year. “I like the length of the runs as the difficulty increases, the only way to shape the runners into being better is by having them continue doing longer or harder runs, or both.” Jeffrey said. “I will try, considering the work payload I might have in the upcoming years, work comes first.” explained Jeffrey when asked about joining cross country until senior year. When asked about running at Montgomery Hill by Evergreen Valley college, Jeffrey described that he is fine with having cross country meets there. “Montgomery is a child-hood memory of mine, the weather and atmosphere are spectacular so I don’t have any trouble competing there. However, there is always the threat of mountain lions and coyotes.” Jeffrey wrote.

Photo Caption: The team groups up to get a team photo after the cross country meet on September 28, 2022. 

Photo Credit: Dhilan Mistry

So far the team has run a few races at Montgomery Hill, next to Evergreen Valley College. Some athletes participate in invitational meets. This season the cross country team only has meets at Montgomery Hill, which is 2.74 miles. The team has had two races with spectacular results from each of the groups. For the first race, the Men’s category got first in varsity out of six teams, first in junior varsity out of four teams, and second place for reserve out of two teams. Womens placed first in varsity over four teams. In the second race, the Men’s category, the team placed first out of six teams, second for junior varsity over three teams, and first out of three teams for reserve.

Cross country is a fun competitive sport that is exciting and rewarding to participate in. The top results are expected to be seen from the cross country team. Through the recent races halfway into the season, they have already shown that they can excel.

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