Hunter cross country runners finish region at personal best

All of Hunter’s cross country runners finished the Region 2 championship, held Oct. 7 at Hunter Park, with their best times of the season.

Six of the runners finished at least two minutes faster then their first run of the season. All six are going to state.

“When kids run that much faster you can’t complain,” head coach Edward Murrell said. “It took this group a bit longer to catch on to things. But they really figured out what we are trying to do with cross country in the past few weeks.”

The region event was held at Hunter Park this year because the Wolverines are the defending champions from the 2010 season.

The six runners going to state are: Joey Mathisen, Jared Thomas, Skyler Anderson, Shathem Scheid, Kaliesha Foy and Heidi Manser.

Mathisen took second place overall at regionals. He ran one minute faster than his time at the beginning of the season.

Scheid took fifth place and ran three to five minutes faster than her pace at the beginning of the season. Manser was only able to finish half of the race at the beginning of the season because of a bad leg, but she recovered and ran three minutes faster.

Murrell attributes the record times to the athletes’ realization that cross country is a competition. They put in the work required to compete and learned how to overcome fear of both failure and success.

“They needed to have faith they could succeed with hard work, and if they are afraid to fail they don’t give themselves a chance to succeed,” Murrell said. “I teach the kids that only one person can take first place but that does not diminish everyone else’s efforts. Compete against yourself. Be better than your best each race.”

Murrell believes the kids are learning life lessons as runners. He hopes that they take these skills and mental strength into their academic and personal lives as well.

“I think this group finally figured it out, because I saw them take better care of each other as teammates; they were better at speed work outs and other practice stuff,” Murrell said. “It’s a good life lesson that it doesn’t matter if they take first or last—they are better runners and better people.

The Utah State cross country championship was held Oct. 19 at Sugar House Park. Results were unavailable at press time. Some of the runners will then begin training for the Foot Locker West Regional held in Walnut, Calif. in December.