Sharyland ISD hosts XC meet
Tomorrow morning, Sharyland Pioneer High School is hosting the Sharyland ISD Cross Country Invitational 2024. With 16 schools from as far east as Brownsville and as far west as Laredo already registered, the competition is going to be intense. But that’s the way coaches, like Pioneer head boys’ cross-country coach Alexis Pena, like it. That’s because this meet will give him, and all the other coaches, a pretty good idea of how their runners are coming along at this point in the still young 2024 cross-country season.
The schools registered are Mission High, Mission Veterans, La Joya Juarez-Lincoln, La Joya Palmview, Brownsville Rivera, Edinburg Economedes, Laredo Nixon, Los Fresnos, McAllen High, McAllen Memorial, McAllen Rowe, PSJA North, PSJA Southwest, PSJA High and of course Sharyland High and Pioneer. With most, if not all, of these schools sending their freshmen, junior varsity and varsity boys and girls teams to this meet, there will be as many as 96 teams competing tomorrow. And with most of these teams having a minimum of 5 runners each, there should be well over 500 runners vying for a top 10 finish in their respective race tomorrow morning.
So, what is cross-country? It’s been described as a strategy based foot race in which runners must manage their stamina as they determine whether they should follow behind the others or push the pace. While this is a pretty accurate description, it does not address the fact that cross-country is more of a team sport than most people realize.
“A lot of people think cross-country is an individual sport, but it’s more of a team sport,” Pena said. “It’s how can we, as a collective group, get to the finish line as close as possible together as fast as possible? Because even if you have a stud that finishes first or second, if your second, third, fourth and fifth runners are far behind, they’ll accumulate too many points.”
When it comes to scoring, cross-country is like golf; the lower the score the better. That’s because each runner is given points that relate directly to where they finished the race. For example, the first place finisher gets one point, the fifth place finisher gets five points and so on. So each team’s score is the sum of the points its top five finishers earned.
Pena, who believes in instilling a pack mentality in his runners, went on to explain, “It all starts in practice. We pack run. That’s because if you can do it in practice, you can do it in a race. If in practice you’re always running with that pack, you believe in yourself internally and you feel like you belong there. So if you practice it, you do it in a race.”
Pena went on to explain that an example of this pack mentality is when a particular runner is struggling or lagging behind his usual pace, one or more of his teammates will run alongside him and encourage him to pick up the pace by keeping up with him.
In regards to this mutual encouragement mentality, Pena said, “I think that’s more effective than me running around and yelling at them because how is that going to help? But if they see their friend, who is always close by, they’ll say, ok let’s go together. That’s good moral support.”
In cross-country, varsity boys and girls races are 5K long. That is the equivalent of 3.1 miles. This year that applies to junior varsity boys and girls as well. The junior varsity girls used to run two miles, like the freshmen boys and girls run. This change is something that was voted on and enacted by District 31-5A.
As is the case with other sports, Big 7 cross-country teams are broken up into three different districts. The Diamondbacks and the Rattlers belong to District 31-5A, the Mission Eagles, the Mission Veterans Patriots, the Juarez-Lincoln Huskies and the Palmview Lobos belong to District 30-5A, and the La Joya Coyotes belong to District 31-6A.
In addition to Pioneer and Sharyland High, there are seven other schools in District 31-5A; Edinburg Vela, McAllen High, McAllen Memorial, McAllen Rowe, PSJA Memorial, PSJA North and PSJA Southwest. When asked who he considers to be the top team or teams in this district, Pena said, “We can’t sleep on anybody in our district. Last year, our second through sixth place teams were within 19 points. So McAllen High ran away with first place and second through seventh, not sixth, were within 19 points.”
The Bulldogs’ 48 points earned them the district championship last year while the Diamondbacks’ 114 points earned them sixth place and the Rattlers’ 122 points earned them seventh place.
Since there are no district standings in cross-country, like there are in most team sports, how teams do in these invitational meets does not affect their chances of advancing to the Regional or State meets. However, the results of these meets do affect individual runners’ ability to participate in what Pena refers to as “out of town trips.”
“These races ultimately dictate out of town trips,” Pena said. “Out of town trips like Round Rock and other meets, they request for you to enter your kids’ times so that only the top 300 in the whole state will be invited. So you want to put in good times so that you can be invited to those meets and you won’t have to wait until Regionals or State to run with the best of them. So yes, I want to go to the local meets with our district opponents, so we can see where we’re at, but with the out of town meets, we can try to compete against people we’ll see at Regional and at State.”
This year the 31-5A district meet is being held October 10th at Springfest Park in McAllen. The Regional meet is being held Oct. 21-22 at Texas A & M Corpus Christi and the State meet is being held Nov. 1-2 at Old Settler’s Park in Round Rock. The top three teams and the top 10 individuals advance from the District meet to the Regional meet and then from the Regional meet to the State meet.
Tomorrow’s meet will begin with the Varsity girls at 7:30 a.m. The remaining races will start at approximately 30 minute intervals with the Varsity boys going second, the Junior Varsity girls going third, the Junior Varsity boys going fourth, the Freshman girls going fifth and the Freshman boys going sixth. The starting line for all these races will be behind the Pioneer High School tennis courts.