By Lauren McCollum

At the district cross country meet on Oct.

20, the MVLXC boys placed first while qualifying all seven individual runners for the state meet this Saturday.

Everyone had pretty high expectations for Cross Country Districts this year since we won last year, and were very successful at state.“We definitely put high expectations and standards on ourselves, but we don’t underestimate our opponents. All the teams know it’s going to be an absolute dogfight at State and it will be extremely competitive and extremely close,” said senior Jack Young. Jack is really looking forward to running one more time with his teammates this weekend at the state meet.

Young also said, “They’ve seriously become like brothers to me. My former teammate Ben Gilbert is two years older than me and had such a huge influence on my life. He graduated two years ago and lives in Africa and we still email each other every month. That’s the kind of bond that running Cross Country together makes. Especially for us seniors, it’s been such an incredible up-and-down journey that we’ve taken together.” The strong bond between the teammates should really help them this weekend.

The boys were very successful at districts this last week. “Districts went really well for us, we had our top seven runners all qualify individually so that’s always a cool thing to accomplish and going in we were confident we could do that,” said senior Zach Krogmann. Krogmann is eager to compete, and has high hopes for the team’s state results.