Long runs paired with your teammates and your favorite music. Hugging your friends and family after a race. Your teammates cheering you on. The nervous feeling of being at the starting line right before the race starts. Pushing yourself to the limit and finishing the race empty. A hard workout with your favorite teammates.
Bus rides with the team. The cold and gray skies that make for perfect race weather. Collapsing at the finish line because you gave it your best. Feeling like you can’t breathe. Prayer circles at meets.
Wanting to win and mentally breaking the competition. Winning a medal. The ringing sound of cow bells and spectators, parents, and coaches loudly cheering. Blue and gold glitter gel and hair ribbons. 1, 2, 3, Bruins.
No amount of words could describe the cross-country experience. It is truly one of a kind.
As the season passes from the heat and bloom of summer to the chilly and quiet of fall, we run through it all. The sun, the heat, the wind, the rain, the mud. One thing stays the same.
XC is a unique sport. It takes a great amount of work ethic, passion, strength, and mental capacity to run cross country. It’s a sport that, honestly, many people hate because they hate running, and aren’t aware of: most probably don’t even know anything about our own XC team.
Now is a good time to know more about the team, because this year, they worked to make Central one of the dominant teams in our region.
Season Recap
Both middle and high school teams won 1st at the Lincoln Trail Conference for the first time, the boys’ team won regions for the second time in a row, a back-to-back win, and the girls placed 3rd, qualified for the state championships: the boys placed 10th, and the girls placed 22nd.
Sophomore Maddison Bates won as regional champion, setting the new girls’ 5k school record at regionals, with a previous record of 19:27:44 in 2017, to 18:54:39. The previous recordholder, Emily Chandler, met with Bates and had a reunion with her former coach, Coach Samantha Dale, and former teammate, Coach Caitlin Gage, at the state championships in Lexington.
Bates and senior Mason Durham were chosen as News-Enterprise Girls’and Boys’ All-Area Runner of the Year, respectively. 8th grader Thomas Cline was chosen as the Newcomer of the Year, and Dale won All-Area Girls’ Head Coach of the Year.
I, Alex Lyon, was voted on the All-Area First Team, sophomore Aubrey Williford and seniors Julia Hobbs and Addison Williford were selected for All-Area Second Team.
Seniors Mason Durham and Charles Cline and junior Jake Ovesen were voted All-Area First Team. Sophomore Jackson Luttrell was selected for All-Area Second Team.
Coaches
Success doesn’t come easy. So how did our team accumulate so much success all in one season?
First, the coaches. The coaches are the support and force that help the team succeed.
This season, there were many newcomers to the team, and head coach Samantha Dale cites this as what helped the team’s success.
“What really made the season was that there were a lot of different personalities this year that we had last year. People just bought in as a team,” Dale said. “We had goals, but this time I felt like we also had people with intentions and desire to reach those goals, and that was a big difference from last season”
She expressed that she “always focuses on relationships with the girls first, because I feel like if they don’t trust you to begin with, then why are they going to want to do your workouts? Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. I feel like it worked really well this season.”
Dale said, “This year we had a lot of personal relationship building there that I think was important between the team.”
“ I can’t do anything other than give [the training] to them. I can’t force it; that’s an inner thing, either you have the desire to do it or you don’t. And I feel like there were quite a few that I saw definitely had that desire, and the team was really more willing to work this year, their mindset was more like, ‘Let’s work. Let’s do something,’ she explained.
As this season had many highlights, Dale said that there were a lot that she felt were her favorites that defined the season.
“It was great to be third at regions, so we could take the whole team to state. It was great to see the girls’ school record go down, especially since I coached Emily [previous record holder], and to coach Maddi to break that record was a big deal to me.”
Freshmen Belle Wagoner and Bella Lee were the most prominent to show a desire to work and to improve. Dale explained that,” watching them go from a 35-minute 5k to 25 minutes, and their excitement and growth was such a big deal.”
I also showed a desire to work and improve. I had a successful last season: being voted News- Enterprise All-Area Newcomer of the Year in my second year of running, and making my mark as being the last runner on the girl’s team to becoming the first, earning my way to state with a 5k pr time of 21:17:59. Dale described that,” to see you have a buddy to run with and how that improved you, that was also a highlight.”
Dale admitted that it was even more of a highlight because she was worried about how I would perform in races because I came into the season without a summer of consistent training: “The motivation wasn’t right there yet, you had done really well last season. And I was super worried about you when you came in.”
Looking ahead to the next season, Dale has a positive outlook: “I’m hoping that the momentum from this year can propel us into working hard and maybe even trying to come and be regional runner-up.” The girls’ team was third at regions, Greenwood and South Warren being the top two teams that are strong competition and have been for the past years. “I know that’s kind of a big goal. But I think these young girls that are coming up have caught the [running] bug, and so I think just building on what we had from last year will be the big focus.”
For head coach Tim Pennington, his goal was to focus on repeating as regional champions and having the team work together to stay together.
Pennington said: “I’ve enjoyed coaching this squad this year and seeing the team develop through their camaraderie, personal growth, and the thrill of doing well as a team in big competitions.”
He added that the team emphasized being a family: the team “embraced it and grew together, on the mental aspects of racing: ”believe it to achieve,” as he put it, and on visualizing the race to become confident in how the race will go.
As for the next season, his goals are similar to Dale’s: “we’ll miss the leaders who will graduate, so it’s definitely another rebuilding campaign. I want our returners to help fill our squad for another regional win. We won our first-ever regional from 2014 to 2016, so with another two wins (this season and previous), I’d love to add 2026 to that list.”
There’s more to being a team than reaching goals and winning together during competition, but also off. How the team spends time together besides is important, and the coaches this season proved it.
Pennington said “We try to make our time together memorable because training is difficult. We look for ways to make it fun by doing secret destination trips during summer training, and many times we will try to have a fun stop after a meet.”
He added that: “ I think the fact we have fun while making memories makes it unique to our sport: everyone supports each other and helps pick up your teammates when needed.”
There are also other components to make a team truly a team.
Assistant coach Caitlin Gage, who graduated from Central in 2017 and was on the XC team, uses her experience as a teammate to be a great coach and help the team reach their goals.
“I focused on positivity because a lot of our team is intrinsically motivated, which is great as a runner, but that sometimes leans to being too hard on oneself. So, trying to focus on changing that mindset can sometimes be beneficial.”
Her favorite part of the season was “watching everyone run and improve and cheer everyone on. We had a special group of kids, and it was fun to watch them come together as a team and bond: pasta nights helped the team do that and also the time we have after school, while waiting for the bus, to see everyone get to know each other and talk about how their day was.
Next season, Gage is “excited to see the middle schoolers grow up and move up to high school and to see everyone improve their personal times,” she added that: “We have so much potential if we are willing to put in the work.”
Leaders of the team
Seniors Julia Hobbs, Addison Williford, Mason Durham, Sadie Hess, Ben Holbrook, and Charles Cline played a huge role in the team’s success this season, showing to be the leaders that the team needed to make the season one of a kind.
For them, the last season is “bittersweet” according to Durham.
“It was such a great way to end my 7-year-long career here, seeing my hard work and dedication pay off was really amazing, as well as having a great group on the team this year,” Durham said. “There was just a great sense of community with the team, and it was just a super fun experience.”
The seniors definitely have a lot to be proud of. Durham is “most proud of the person I’ve grown into over all my years of running ,XC and a lot of it is because of my teammates who mentored me and showed me not only how to be a better runner but a better human being overall.”
As a senior on the team, the experience is great, but at the same time it can be stressful and difficult. Every senior had different motivations and reasons to keep going.
Cline stated that,” the fact that it’s my last year was a big motivator to just leave it all out on the course every time I raced.”
Williford’s focus was to “take the pressure off of results and just enjoy the experience.”
Durham’s motivation: “honestly just my competitive nature and the desire to just keep getting better and seeing how much faster I could get and to keep pushing my body further.”
Beyond what the team achieved during races, there are so many moments throughout the season to be celebrated.
Williford sees her regional race as something she was proud of, as she played a big role in the team’s score, and her performance was key to making it to the state championships.
Cline mentioned that “there was a lot of growth from everyone and people were showing up every day and working hard to improve themselves and benefit the team too.” He was proud of “setting a pr at regions, my little brother Thomas getting fourth overall and beating me, and getting to hold the region champs trophy again.”
8th grader Thomas Cline not only won Newcomer of the Year but also competed in the Middle School XC National Championships, placing third and first in the state, tying the course record of the fastest time by a runner from Kentucky, shortly after the postseason.
“This season was great for me because at every middle school race besides postseason and state, I was either 1st or 2nd, and that boosts my confidence for next season because I feel that I can use my experience from leading and working to stay in the lead for high school,” he said.
Bates was most proud of reaching her goals, one being to break the school record, and the other to win. And so she did, winning a total of 3 races: the Bulldog Invitational and Lincoln Trail Conference competitions and the Regional championships. She expressed that she was “proud of my wins and for the support I got from everybody.”
XC is not an easy sport. It takes a great work ethic, mental capacity, and grit to excel. The team proved they have what it takes, and all it takes is all you have.
Throughout the season, there was lots of growth, whether the race or practice was a “failure” or a success.
Bates said that she learned to “always be proud of yourself, even if it’s not a good race. Everybody goes through it; it happens. I had a very good season, so I remember to keep that in mind too.”
“This is an amazing team, and the motivation and support I got from them really made this season great,” she added.
Durham emphasized that “nothing is going to come easy but that doesn’t mean you give up when things get hard. If you want to succeed in life, you have to have a work ethic. Nothing good is just going to be handed to you; you have to work for it.”
Consistency, for Cline, was a main focus: “I would try to do everything as consistently as possible, even with something small as what time I went to bed, the food I ate, the music I’d listen to on the bus.”
The team’s theme for the season was orange for goldfish and blue for sharks, and the quote: “Mindset matters.” A theme makes XC more fun and is a reminder of what’s important: mentality.
Durham’s mindset was to: “try to win as many races or be at the very least top ten at almost all of our meets this season,” his main goal was to win regions, a “big goal also coming in as the top runner in the region at the beginning of the season.” Durham placed second:” I just got beat out and had to settle for the runner-up spot at regions.”
The team’s mindset definitely played a key part in their success, as it helped them reach their goals and place well in competition.
What was different from last season was, according to Cline, that “I felt like everyone had a strong mindset because everyone realized their race performance really mattered to the team’s placement; previously we would depend on the top three runners, but this year we were counting on the whole team.”
Williford’s mindset was focused on the motivation and support that her teammates provided and the possibility of making it to state.
This season, our Bruins truly made their names and Central’s unforgettable, and we could not be more proud. You could say that our true colors turned out to be blue, yellow, and white.
We can’t wait to see what we will achieve this track season and next XC season! Go Bruins!
