As some of you know, Eric is running on his school’s cross country team. This is his second year on the team. Last year he went out for the team just so that he would be in better shape for his soccer club team, but he really ended up loving it.
This year has been a lot of fun again. Their first meet was at Fox River Grove, who were the state champions last year. Eric surprised everyone and won that race. He told us one of his goals for the year was to win a race, so he made it the first one. After that, he took several third places. At a big invitational meet, he took 15th out of over a hundred runners. The first 20 runners receive ribbons. No one at his school had ever qualified for a ribbon until Eric did it last year.
For a few weeks, Eric wasn’t feeling well, so he didn’t do as well as normal at a few meets. Once he started feeling better, the coach told him to take it easy for one more race, just to be sure.
Another one of Eric’s goals is to qualify for the state tournament. Yesterday was the conference meet and he finished in 8th place with a 2 mile time of 12:33. That qualified him for sectionals which are Saturday morning. We figure he’ll have to finish somewhere in the top 25 or so to make it to state. The top 3 teams get to send 7 runners, and the next top 10 or so runners also qualify.
So we’ll see how he does and look for another posting on Saturday.