By Dustin Rudolph

Tic Tac’s are flying, speeches are spoken, the runners prepare for the gun to sound.  Saturday, Sept. 21, girls and boys from the Cross-Country team ran in Carroll/Swan Lake meet.  After the meet the team had a picnic and some of the team went for a dip in Swan Lake.

In a pre-run interview Coach Paul Iekel said “ From the girls, I want everyone to have a good race at the same time. Being in the middle for team scores, finishing fifth. From the boys (standpoint), a good effort that would get us better than last year (last place) and to beat about 3 teams.” Iekel also commented that he sees this course as “unique and a true cross country course”, with more trails.

On Saturday, the Atlantic varsity boys finished ninth (out of 10) in class A with 242 points. The JV boys also came in ninth with 252 points. Varsity girls finished fifth in class A with 155 points. The JV girls finished sixth with 163 points.  Coach Iekel made a “deal” with the team the morning of the race, if one of the four teams made their “goal” then he would get in the lake. The one and only team that made their goal was the varsity girls (have 5 in the top 50) so Iekel got in.

In a post-race interview Iekel said in general we were a little flat, nobody had their best run on the girls side but the team score was good. The girls showed how well they can do when they all run good. On the boys side, they’d been running well all year and they ran decently, but were flat compared to other meets. Overall everyone did well moving up in the race. The team wasn’t as “sharp” as Iekel had hoped. When asked who had stood out the most in this race Iekel responded with the JV boys, such as senior Logan Hemphill and freshman Camden McFadden. He believed they had the best runs of the day.

In an interview with Phoenix Shadden and Alexis Brockman, two freshman varsity runners, they both said they did pretty good at Swan Lake. Shadden’s favorite part of the meet was getting thrown in the lake afterwards. Brockman’s favorite was the person in the chimpanzee mask along the course. Both enjoyed the potluck after the race.