By Brian Sheehan ‘25

Winning comes in many different forms in cross country. You don’t have to come in first place as an individual or a team for the meet to be considered a win. Sometimes a win is taking care of business and accomplishing your team goal for the meet. On Saturday, Nov. 2, the cross country team did exactly that.

It was finally sectionals week. The day that had been circled on our schedule since June was finally here, and everyone knew just how important this week was. The goal was to finish in the top seven as a team and qualify as a team for the state meet.

All week we had been talking about strategy and where everyone should be at different parts of the race. Our key strategy was ensuring our fourth through seventh runners stayed together and passed others.

Sectionals were back at Metamora, where two years ago we qualified for state as a team. I had the race of my life then and was excited to be back. I didn’t have a great race at sectionals last year and was eager to redeem myself.

The warm up for the race started off with some of us talking and cracking jokes. We were trying to lighten the mood and free any stress some of us might have been feeling. The second half of the warm up, however, was silent. Everyone started to focus on the race and block out the outside noise.

This was the first time all season that I felt nervous before a race. However, as we got to the line and continued drills, the nerves began to fade and my confidence grew. By the time the race was about to start, there was not a nervous bone in my body. I wasn’t going to let this be the last cross country race of my high school career.

“I was really nervous because I was coming off injuries, but was confident I could get the job done,” said junior Oliver Davis.

The race started out well. Everyone was right where they needed to be through the first mile and we kept cruising along.

A huge part of the race that helped me was running with junior Aidan Leary all race. I was able to use him to stick on pace and pass people up. At the end of the race, we finished 75th and 76th, which was huge for our scoring. If we had not ran with each other the whole race, things might not have worked out the way we wanted.

Leary said, “Running with Brian helped me out because I had a pacer, which helped both me and him succeed and qualify for state.”

After the race was the most suspenseful part of the day. We initially finished sixth and qualified for state, but the results were unofficial so we couldn’t celebrate. The team and I would rapidly check to see the updated scores. Suddenly, we moved down to seventh place. That advantage was only one point, then it went up to two, then back to one. After a while, the scoring didn’t change and the placement stuck.

It was official. We finished seventh and advanced to state.

We made it by one point. It was a close race that came down to the wire. All the hard work that had been put in since June finally paid off.

“It means a lot to qualify as a team,” said sophomore Dylan Cody. “It shows that we worked hard on those early morning runs and those late nights after school. By beating the odds, we proved we were more capable than people thought.”

This has definitely been a fun senior season. We accomplished our team goal of making the state meet and became only the eighth team in school history to do so. I have been fortunate enough to be on two of those teams and run at the state meet my sophomore and senior year.

This was a season I’ll never forget and was a great way to cap off my cross country career at Brother Rice.

Photo Source: Coach Kyle Swynenburg