Saturday might have been an uneventful day on the surface for Community R-6 cross country, but there was more to it.

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The program sent two boys and two girls to the Class 1 District 3 meet at South Callaway in Mokane and didn’t have anybody qualify after everyone finished near the bottom in their races. 

The day was continuously cold and the hills were an immutable nuisance for runners on South Callaway’s course, which head coach Josie Hess said affected Community’s crop of freshmen runners that came into this season without any long-distance runner experience.

“We haven’t run at all in the cold until (Saturday), and we don’t really get to run on hills at all because we don’t really have anywhere around school that is hilly,” Hess said. “It was a lot, and it got in their heads.”

The struggle goes beyond wearing extra layers that could slow runners down, Hess said, as the mental is just as, if not more, important.

“It’s just a very mental sport,” Hess said. “Depending where you are in that first or second mile, you can either use it to fuel you or it can really hurt you mentally.”

In the boys 5,000 meters full of 99 runners, Nicholas Henke finished 89th with a time of 25:35 and Rett Curtis was 99th with a 34:08. Out of 66 in the girls race, Evelyn Scott and Grace McCoskey went back-to-back in 63rd and 64th, respectively, with times of 35:16 and 36:28.

Looking at the season before districts, Hess said there was improvement all year from each newcomer as personal-best times kept dropping. It was encouraging to see each of the freshmen improve after not having cross country available in junior high and only having shorter distances in track and field. 

"They were all able to cut several minutes overall and stuck with it,” Hess said. “Rett really made me proud this year because he cut a little over five minutes from the beginning to the end and just consistently was improving and working hard.”