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The Maroon Devils and Lady Devils cross country meet at 8 a.m. at Deep Creek on weekdays to train.
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
The Maroon Devils and Lady Devils cross country teams won’t be going to the Smoky Mountain Conference this year. Instead, with both teams coming off wins in recent seasons, they’re aiming bigger, said head coach Keith Payne.
“We’re doing one on Sept. 16, but that’s the only meet we’re going for. This team is really good. The goal isn’t to build a good 1A team, the goal is to build a great high school program. There are individuals on all the teams that can compete with the top kids we have, but not enough to push all of them,” he said.
Payne said competitions need to be more evenly matched in terms of the third, fourth, fifth or sixth top runners as well as the top two.
“You win state not based on the top two, but based on the third, fourth, fifth or sixth,” he said. “Last year proved that. For the first time, we had a three-way tie for the boys. The sixth runner broke that tie. Those kids are really the most important. Those are the kids I need to have pushed.”
Three of the competitions they want to compete in this year are the Friday Night Lights, the Wendy’s Invitational and Hare & Hounds.
Payne said the competitions would have Swain athletes playing against opponents from the entire southeastern U.S., including South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and even Florida and Kentucky at the Wendy’s Invitational.
“I’ve talked to several other coaches, and they understand,” Payne said of his decision. “The goal is to win something bigger this year.”
In terms of other goals, Payne said he wanted the team to hone its skills for the 4x8 competition, which he said was a way to “judge how good your distance program is.” The boys’ team recently won it and Payne said he wanted to keep that trend going.
“You want to take all your best further distance runners. That’s the race everybody want to win,” he said. “We’ve been close the last two years. Last year, we did win it.”
In addition, some team members’ injuries in recent years have inspired Payne to work harder at making sure everyone stays healthy this year.
“The past few years, we’ve played with injuries and sickness, but if we stay healthy, the sky’s the limit,” he said. “There’s no telling how high we can fly.”
On Wednesday morning, July 26, the cross country teams met as they always do at 8 a.m. at Deep Creek for their morning practice.
Senior Connor Lambert, captain for the Maroon Devils this year, said the team had six seniors this year and they were going into this season confident.
“Every year we thought it was going to be our year,” Lambert said. “We’re more mature runners now, we’re going in 1st place. We want to be first this year by a lot.”
Girls’ team captains Arizona Blankenship and Lily Bjerkness said one of their goals was to get the team as strong and collaborative as possible. Blankenship said the goal was “trying to keep the winning streak going.”
Bjerkness said the team was trying to spend time together to make sure they were in sync personality-wise.
“We usually get along super well,” she said. “We’re trying to do stuff for team building, having dinner together. We’re excited to go out and do what we came to do as a team.”