The Spirit of Cross Country

The Yorkville cross country teams spend a lot of time in the forest preserves in town. The high school and middle school teams used to hold their home meets at Harris Forest Preserve. Once the meets got too big both schools moved to the Hoover Education Center. Yorkville has some of the most beautiful forest preserves in the area and it only make sense that our teams would want to use them. This year the middle school team decided we should give something back by helping clean up at the Hoover Center.

After running between 3 and 8 miles on a beautiful Saturday morning at the Hoover Center, runners picked up garbage bags to clean up the 400 acre park. To make things a little more fun, the kids were split up based on the color shirt they were wearing and were tasked with finding the most garbage. After an hour in the park the red team emerged victorious, but everyone felt a little better about giving back to one of the places we most like to run.

That brings us to the spirit of the sport of cross country. Cross country is one of the most supportive sports many of these young athletes will encounter. While some sports have cuts and and encourage teammates to compete against each other, cross country runners, while still competing for a spot in the coveted "top 7" of the team, see their own individual successes during the season whether they are the first runner on the team or the last. Cross country teams routinely cheer for runners on other teams, as was exemplified at Hoover on Saturday. Runners from Plainfield South High School were at Hoover practicing for the upcoming Yorkville Invite. As the younger Yorkville runners ran past the high school athletes applauded and shouted words of encouragement. Despite the fact that both sets of runners would be competing against each other in a few years there was no antagonism shown, and this is a common occurrence in the sport of cross country.

Finally, memories of this past Saturday are not complete without mentioning the anonymous bit of generosity from a resident of the White Oak Estates subdivision. A group of runners were nearing the end of a 7-mile run and the temperature was reaching a high point as we approached the afternoon. This resident, who was vacuuming his car, had a case of water that he handed out to the parched runners. After running so long it is hard to express how much the runners appreciated this gesture. If you ever see a group of runners in your neighborhood we hope, at the very least, you'll cheer on their extraordinary efforts. A little bottled water would be a much appreciated gesture, as well, but we'll settle for the support.