Competition. Pressure. Victory.

This is the sequence of events that went through Sophomore Christian Lowery’s mind before his 4^th place win at the cross country district meet on Saturday, October 26.

Lowery and his team have put a lot of practice into the preparation for important meets such as this one. Not only do students physically prepare, but also mentally through motivation and focus.

Lowery says that a lot of his motivation comes from the fear of what would happen if he didn’t try his hardest.

“A couple of days before the race I will specify a time I want to hit. If I have ran the course before I will mentally say ‘here’s where I need to speed up. Here’s where I need to watch out for dangers, where people like to pass you up a lot,’” he said.

More mental preparation can come from teammates.

“Before the race, we spend a lot of time encouraging each other so we can get motivated,” said Lowery.

Running isn’t what most people would consider a “typical sport”.

“You don’t have to rely on your teammates, it is up to you how good you do,” Lowery said. “All the pressure is on you. You have no one but yourself to blame if you do bad and no one to blame but yourself if you do good.”

This is actually the part he enjoys the most. However there is still an aspect in the race where the teams do rely on eachother.

“There are individual standings and team standings. With the individual standings, you only have to rely on yourself, but with team standings you have to have several good runners,” said Lowery.

Although Lowery was able to get a high placement, he says that he still allows room for the coaches to help him improve.

“Coaches tell me what I did good and what I could do better on,” he said. For example they might tell him “don’t let the course get the best of you,” or “You could have sprinted better during this part”.

Because of his and his teammates’ hard work, the Chisholm Trail cross country team received 3^rd place overall at district, which qualified them to advance to regionals. If the team does well at regionals, they will qualify to advance to state.

“We made it to regionals our first year being a varsity team so even if we don’t make state we still have a lot more to look forward to,” Lowery said.