The week of Aug. 7, the Niles North cross-country team began seasonal training for their upcoming season. So far, the Vikings have competed in a plethora of meets with highly great results to look forward to as they inch closer to Conference. 

An important goal for all athletes to look forward to is their growth. All athletes are looking forward to the future and the improvements they can make in their performance. When an individual athlete grows, the whole team grows.  “We can’t control what the other teams do, we can only control what we do as a team,” Boys Cross Country coach David Shafron said. 

There are particular individual athletes who represent the Vikings really well. They are to be considered among the elite runners in the State. Athletes Evan Parker and Ari Almion are high-level ambassadors to the boy’s cross-country team. 

“It’s really fun to watch them succeed, watch them finish in the top five of our invites, watch them get medals, see them get recognition for it, and most importantly they’ve worked so hard to now see all the success they’re having because of their hard work, that’s really fun too,” Shafron said. 

Both teams are seeing big success for their athletes. 

“What could potentially happen for the first time in about five years, we have the potential for a good possibility of a runner to be all-conference,” Girls Cross Country coach Andrew Swedberg said. “Lindsey Klaus is her name and she has put in a ton of time and a lot of work to improve dramatically from last season, so very well deserved potential honor.” 

Cross country is a unique sport partially because of the way it is scored. You can have a good team score and do lousy individually or vice versa. Throughout the season cross country sees athletes set season personal records (PRs) and overall career PRs. Because of their continuous hard work and dedication, they personally continue to get better and get stronger. 

Recently, the annual Pat Savage meet occurred at Niles West. The Pat Savage meet is a huge meet where thousands of runners compete. To put it into perspective, there are hundreds of runners in each heat. It is considered to be a tough meet because of the sheer volume of kids to run a fast time. Multiple athletes including Farah Tawfik, Alexa Agrelo, Adowa Baotang, and Mei Lin Sicinski all PR’d for the season at this particular meet. The Vikings did really well collectively but it was quite impressive to see that many people PR. 

It is important for people outside of the cross-country world to realize that cross-country isn’t really just about running. There is a lot of team camaraderie and there are friendships that are developed from being on the team. You meet all kinds of different people when you race against students from different schools. You become addicted to bettering yourself and getting to be a stronger individual. It’s thrilling to be running in such beautiful sceneries such as forest preserves where athletes push themselves past limits they thought couldn’t be passed. It bonds people in a way that cannot be faked.