H H e e St
y
n
A
Coach Kaiser gathers the cross country
team before practice and has them
give the Varsity cross country team
a “stare-down”. The students put on
their most serious face and strong
stance to intimidate the varsity team
h
C
A
Be
r
e
g
n
e
l
al
#
wer
o
L
&
y
r
a
ent
Elem
Sec
a best time of 18 minutes and 33
seconds.
By challenging
Much like Ananya, William Kim ended
and encouraging one another, the
the
season
feeling proud of himself. Though
lower secondary cross country team learned
he
“wanted
to do soccer” at the beginning of
the importance of teamwork for personal
the
season,
he
felt it would be a good idea “to
improvement.
challenge”
himself
“in terms of strength and
According to sixth grade Ananya S an-
health.”
He
met
that
challenge during “The
thosh she joined cross country because she
first
hiking
race”.
He
said,
“I hadn’t done any
“likes running”. She said, I thought cross
5km
[races]
and
so
I
needed
a lot of practice in
country would improve my speed.” Ananya
order
to
improve.”
But
what
really
helped him
was worried “that the course was too narrow
overcome
this
was
the
“encouragement
from
and athletes were not allowed to walk.” She
friends”.
William
added,
“Mr.
Kaiser
helped
was especially worried because “it was hard
me by saying ‘I can do better’ and that ‘I am
to keep up with the speed [ of others] at the
beginning of the season.” Regardless, through really good’, so this helped me too.”
Xingshen Liu was happy he got to take
Coach Kaiser’s “cheering” and by being able to
part
in
the cross country season. He has a goal
“run with people” of her same speed she was
to
“run
a 10K with his dad”, so he felt cross
encouraged. Through this, she was able to
country
could help him. At first he “could not
push herself harder and finish the season with
78
Fall Sports and Activities
untry
ss Co
o
r
C
y
r
a
d
on
run very
well, but he got better.” Being able to
practice with peers was a big support for Xing-
shen. He said he likes working with people
“who do not give up easily” and are focused.
Seeing his peers finish the race during practice
pushed him to finish each and every run, even
though at times he wanted to give up.
The student athletes came to learn how
important their coaches and teammates were
to their success, and encouragement was one
of the more efficient ways for athletes to run
longer distances and become faster.
Coach Kaiser, lead the team into excel-
lency and improvement by being an example.
He said a “good coach should be willing to run
with athletes and encourage them to run de-
spite their own difficulties such as balancing
time with family and training athletes.”
The cross country season ran from Aug.
17 to Oct. 14 and was open to all grade sixth
through eighth grade students.