By Tavarus Pennington

Reporter

The Jaguar boys cross-country team is on a bit of a run but was staying humble going into one of the top three biggest meets of the year.

The team is coming off a ninth place finish out of 44 other schools at their prior meet at Missouri Southern in Joplin.

Junior Seth Henks was very pleased with the results and said the team did very well.

The team is working hard to ensure that they keep the high finishes up. They know that if they want to accomplish their season-long goal of going to state as a team, then the battle is constantly going uphill.

The team is making a big effort to get better as a team.

Hanks described the initiatives being made by the team.

“We are doing hard, quality workouts,” Henks said.

But all that aside, Coach Troy Harding still sees and is focusing on what the team needs to do to get better.

“We need to keep our leading pack of runners tight,” Harding said

Henks believes the team also needs to stay strong mentally to eventually accomplish their goal.

If the Jaguar boys cross-country team can stay on the winning course they are on, they can go the distance and go to state as a team.

The last meet for the cross-country team was the KU-Rim Rock meet at the University of Kansas.

It’s one of the top three meets of the year, and 155 schools from around the Midwest will be in attendance. There will be more than 1000 runners competing at this meet.

Henks hinted at the importance of the meet.

“This is a big meet because the whole team is going,” Henks said. “We feel very prepared going into this meet.”

The team is definitely planning on coming home with a high finish for their school.

Junior Collin Horn knows it will not be easy.

“Historically this has been a tough meet, but we usually get good times,” Horn said

The team is healthy going into the end of the season and plans to keep it that way.

After the KU-Rim rock meet the team goes to Arkansas this weekend then has the conference championship meet, districts, sectionals, and state.

The team is going to keep working hard and accomplish their goal of finishing the season stronger than ever.