Boys Cross Country has started up again with new members on the way and old ones making their way back to the course. Even the coaches are excited, but there are a lot of feelings going through the members with the season starting back up.
Byron Norris is a senior at Warren Central High School and has been a runner for four years straight. Even though he is a returning member, his feelings about the upcoming season are all over the place.
“I was pretty confident going into it, but right now I’m a bit shaky and I hope as the season progresses that I regain my confidence,” he said.
According to Byron, he has a routine set up for himself that prepares him for his meets.
“I wake up early in the morning to stretch,” Norris said. ”I usually eat a bagel and drink a lot of water before the meets.”
His routine seems to be working well for him considering that Byron has improved from his past years of running. All the work he has been putting into the meets shows based on his improvement this year.
“This past weekend I just ran a new personal best and placed sixth, so I feel like my hard work is paying off,” he said.
He has made close relationships with his coach and also his teammates from years of being in the same group of people running and competing.
“My teammates are some of my closest friends, basically like family at this point,” he said.
He also feels like Coach Sean O’Brien, his current coach, has made a big impact on his running career.
“I respect my coach, and I feel like I wouldn’t be half the runner I am today without him,” Norris said.
Coach O’Brien has coached at Warren Central High School for 10 years and has been a head coach for eight years. He has only coached at Warren, and he graduated from Warren in 2011.
As head coach he definitely has feelings about the returning season.
“I'm very excited,” he said. “While our top runner from 2023 Grant Coburn graduated, we are returning a lot of other guys. They have been working really hard and will see big time improvements this year.”
Coach O’Brien says his favorite thing about coaching cross country is how it feels like a family. Even though each year is different, those years still provide memories.
“There’s a special bond you form with someone else when you are working toward a common goal and pushing each other to be better each day,” he said. “Plus all of the guys are close friends outside of practice too.”
Also, according to O’Brien, there really is no team captain or leader declared, since the seniors are the ones that are usually viewed as leaders. The ones that stand out the most as captains are Byron Norris and Jackson Haynes.
“They both work really hard and do all of the small things that are successful,” O’Brien said. “That type of mentality spreads to their teammates too.”
Jackson Haynes has been running since the seventh grade and was encouraged by his seventh grade coach to join cross country. With the season returning, Jackson has mixed feelings as well.
“I’m really excited because I feel like I can do big things going into it,” he said.
Haynes is just as grateful for his coach as Norris.
“I feel like he’s a great coach and has a great mindset,” Haynes said. “I feel like the workouts he gives us are really good, they help us out in the long run, and keep us in a good mindset as well.”
According to Jackson, he enjoys the team bonding experiences they have been doing over the years with being a team leader and having close bonds with his teammates show how strong their relationships have formed over the years of being on the same team.
“I love the spaghetti nights that we have every time before the meets,” he said. “The team bonding experiences over the summer, fall and the winter runs, they’re all awesome.”
Coming from these three, this season seems to be promising great things from the boys cross country team and Warrior Nation will be patiently waiting to see their growth in action.