Running towards personal best

Sophomore+Kevin+Birge+%28right%29+runs+in+the+boys+open+race+at+an+Oct.+5+meet+at%0AYorkville+High+School.+The+team+competes+on+Saturday+Oct.+26+for+regionals+at%0AHammel+Forest+Preserve.

Sophomore Kevin Birge (right) runs in the boys open race at an Oct. 5 meet at Yorkville High School. The team competes on Saturday Oct. 26 for regionals at Hammel Forest Preserve.

As the days grow shorter and the leaves begin to fall, cross country runners settle into the season with a new style of coaching.

Coach Matthew Johnson said, “It’s been a very successful season. The biggest part was just the transition from coach to coach and combining the program, as opposed to having a boys’ team and a girls’ team, just combining it to where everything is done together. It’s been very successful. They’re a good group of kids and they really came together.”

The boys and girls practice and travel to meets together, but they compete separately.

This is Johnson’s first season coaching cross country at East, but he has experience coaching in Sandwich and Plano.

Richard Gatz, now an East counselor, was the previous coach for 11 seasons.

“Coach Gatz had us stay more on campus and train more for increasing our paces. Whereas with Coach Johnson, we merged the boys and the girls’ team. He focuses more on, where we run more in practice rather than having more intensity during practice,” Ayushmaan Trivedi, senior and varsity runner, said.

“Out of the 29 that we have, 26 of them have run a lifetime personal best, the fastest they’ve ever ran in their life. They really bought into the program and the training,” Johnson said.

“On the boys’ team, we’re led by a lot of very talented seniors, and we’re going to miss them a lot. But we’ve got a very strong group of underclassmen, just waiting to have that breakout race,” he said.

Trivedi said, “[The season] has been going pretty well. A lot of our younger guys are starting to compete with the varsity guys and our varsity guys are getting only better, starting to drop their times and do pretty well.”

The majority of meets are three-mile races.

“Cross country differs from other sports because cross country is more mental than it is physical. If you have a bad mentality when you’re running cross country, you won’t be able to run as well as you want to. If you’re not in the right state of mind, then you won’t be able to run in your best conditions,” Trivedi said.

John Zywicki, senior and varsity runner, said, “Cross country, I’m sure, is one of the most mental sports. … [My] mindset is: fake it ‘til you make it.”

“Cross country might seem like an individual sport where you’re just running, but, overall, it is a team sport. Much like golf, the lesser points your team has, the better you place. You really do want to create a team bond and a pack that can help you throughout meets, throughout the year, leading into the state series,” Alexander Dills, varsity runner and senior, said.

Trivedi describes the team as “motivated, determined, family-like, and supportive.”

“The team is dedicated on and off the track. … We take care of ourselves. And, as seniors, we make sure our younger guys are doing the right thing. They’re hydrating. They’re icing and stretching. We make sure that they do enough, so that way they’re not hurting throughout the week,” Trivedi said.

Some team members describe the East team as one of the smaller high school teams.

“East’s team this year is probably one of the smallest teams in the four schools in our district, but we have a lot of guys that are willing to put in the effort, which you don’t see a lot,” Dills said.

“We’re a lot smaller than a lot of the other teams, so it’s more of a pack mentality,” Zywicki said.

Team members said they look forward to pushing through the last stretch of the season.

“What I’m looking forward to the rest of the season is some of the better races that we have because we have upcoming races where the courses are nice and flat. When we get into October, that’s when the weather drops, so running is at its best weather,” Trivedi said.

“[I’m looking forward to] seeing how far we can get with what we’re doing and how other people get their times down and how we improved from where we started,” Zywicki said.

Dills described running as a mental challenge.

“The biggest thing with running is that it’s a mental challenge. … So, it’s always pushing through and trying to keep going and keep going through the hardships,” Dills said.

Johnson said the team has come a long way from where they began this season.

“We started off where we didn’t really know how to race together. We didn’t know how to work out together in workouts. And as of late, they’ve been showing that fire you want to see between teammates where there’s a little bit of competitiveness between one another, but then at finish there’s a high five after one another, ‘thanks for pushing me, thanks for working with me.’ They’re really starting to buy into we, not me.” Johnson said.