By Hanson Han, Staff Writer
Cross country is a sport that anyone could participate in. As far as sports go, it is the most straightforward that it gets: Run as fast and as long as you can. This simple sport is one of the most popular high school sports and has attracted many Mills students. This year specifically, Mills’ cross country team is one of the best that the school has seen in quite some time.
In a sense, cross country’s practice is just like any other sport. In a typical practice, we start warming up at 3:00 PM, perform our workout for the day, and end at 5:00 PM. Although it may seem like practice is repetitive and dull, there is a surprising variety of workouts that we do.
When we practice long distance running, we could run anywhere from 3 to 6 miles, all around the surrounding area, at varying paces. When we practice sprinting, we sprint different distances, at different speeds, with different rest times, and even with different elevations (sprinting on the track or sprinting up a hill). The combination of the four variations could make for many different and unique sprinting workouts, each one being just as grueling, but fun, as the other. These sprint workouts could range anywhere from 1 mile to 3 miles, but as the name suggests we sprint these miles. Lastly, there is everybody’s favorite workout, the time trial. We run a certain distance as fast as we can, with all of us striving to beat our previous times and each other.
Because of all this practice, the Mills cross country team has been performing better than ever. An interview with the Mills cross country coach, Coach Larry, shows the proof of how good this year’s team is. At a local level, the Mills cross country team is the best out of all the schools in the San Mateo Union High School District. In our league of 17 teams, we placed second. In our division of 25 teams, we placed in the top 5. Because of such success, the Mills cross country team has a really good chance of making it to CCS (Central Coast Section). CCS is a competition between the best schools in the region. There is also a 50/50 chance that the Mills cross country team will make it to state, which is a competition between the finest schools in California.
All in all, the Mills cross country team has made a breakthrough this school year, going further than anyone would have ever predicted. Out of all the sports that Mills High School has to offer, the cross country team has to have been the most successful (except for badminton of course). In the meantime, every runner on the cross country team will continue to run as hard as they can, in order for us to make Mills history.
