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image by the cross country team

The UNCG cross country and track team faced a lot of new challenges and changes in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. With weekly testing last semester, and testing before meets this semester, the cross country team was diligent in ensuring the virus was not spread among them. One of the most notable features was the stark decrease in meets across the season. During the official cross country season, the team only participated in one meet, the Southern Conference (SoCon). This is a large difference from last year’s five meets. In this article, Freshman Jenna Reither and Sophomore Michael Zapherson give their take on the pandemic and its effects on the team. 

Michael found the practices to be fairly similar to last year. The only difference he really felt was the inability to practice far away from campus. The team lost two assistant coaches in the past year, restricting the team from traveling to different places to run. Saturday long runs with the team were mandatory last year, but this year the team is expected to take part in their own runs. The times in weight rooms were also fairly equal, the only variability being in the added time to wipe equipment down. When the team isn’t running, the coach expects the athletes to socially distance themselves and wear masks. 

While the season was definitely met with challenges, most parties found some positive outtakes from some aspects of the season. With other interviewees, some people found team bonding to be a little stunted, but Zapherson actually found the team to be more connected.

“A lot of the guys are hanging out with more people on the team, surprisingly, being that we can’t go out and do what we normally do. We see each other a lot more because we have to stay kind of like secluded in our friend groups so we don’t increase our exposure.”

During the fall semester, Zapherson opted to stay home, resulting in a few struggles he has been forced to persevere through. “My parents are pretty cautious, and so they wanted me to stay at home…, but now that the vaccines are out I think they feel a little bit more comfortable… Not getting to come here last semester made a world of a difference. I was probably doing, on average, like fifty miles last semester, and my coach now has bumped me up thirty miles a week, so I’m sitting there around like eighty miles a week… My body cannot keep up.”

“Unfortunately, we did have to go into quarantine about a month out from the cross country championship. So, we were in quarantine for two weeks, and then we only had two weeks to prepare for the conference meet, which is a little bit unsettling, but not terrible… I think it did affect our performance both mentally and physically just because there’s just like a mental block because we feel that we had been sitting in a room for two weeks, but we also had to keep it mind that we had been training for a couple of months, and so that training just didn’t go down the drain.”

Despite the setbacks that came with a few aspects of the season, Freshman Jenna Reiter stood out as one of the stars of the new recruits. Earning first for the team in the championship race, she was happy with her placement, but expected a bit more for her time, finding it to be affected by the team’s stint in isolation. 

Looking forward to future seasons, the UNCG cross country team has dedicated themselves to pounding the pavement and lighting up tracks. With the pandemic proving that team cohesiveness and performance indicators are relatively still intact, there is no doubt the runners will return even stronger in years to come.

article written by Wesley Britt