You return a top 5 with a team average of 16:42 this year. How does the team look after summer practices so far?
The team is well-prepared after a solid summer of base work. Right now, we look strong and we're relatively healthy heading into the season. Mileage has been hovering in the 65-75 range for the last few weeks and the men are responding well to the training. Hard days have consisted primarily of fartlek and tempo work. I don't believe in doing interval training over the summer because it just becomes an extension of the track season, which is long enough as it is. We'll start interval work toward the end of August and refine the foundation we've built over the summer.
Any new additions to the team or surprises we can expect?
We return most of our top 7 from last year and will have to develop some of the younger talent before they can make an impact on the varsity level. We're not going to surprise anyone this season - we're just going to continue to put in the work to get better every day which will, in turn, help us to achieve positive results.
What is your schedule this season and are you changing anything up?
The only change to our schedule is that we will be opening up a week later than last year in order to give us another week of quality training, to include a longer tempo run on the Saturday that we would have been racing. 6 Sep: Mobile XC Challenge of Champions; 13 Sep: Spain Park Invite; 20 Sep: Opelika Invite; 27 Sep: Montgomery Academy Invite; 4 Oct: Jesse Owens Classic; 11 Oct: Tiger Classic; 18 Oct: 23rd Annual Husky Challenge; 30 Oct/1 Nov: 6A Sectional Meet; 8 Nov: AHSAA State Championships
What goals has your team established for this season?
Come to practice with the mindset of getting better every day. We don't talk about what place we're going to get or how fast we're going to run. Just put in the work and the results will take care of themselves.
| Opelika High School (AL) | 100 | |||
| 1) Ben Bryant | 15:49.30 | |||
| 2) kane Barrett | 16:13.40 | |||
| 3) Ladrevious Benson | 16:59.50 | |||
| 4) Kevin Lazenby | 16:59.60 | |||
| 5) Andrew Bartlett | 16:59.80 | |||
| Average Time: 16:36.32 Total Time: 1:23:01.60 1-5 Split: 1:10.50 | ||||
| 6) Anfernee Williams | 17:19.50 | |||
| 7) Hayden Washburn | 17:30.80 | |||