The varsity cross country team has seen a major improvement from last year, jumping from last place a year ago to currently sitting in third place in the CVC. Senior runner Maddox Smith credits the new found success to the new coach Curtis Hobbs.

“He’s really consistent,” Smith said. “You get the feeling that he always knows what he’s doing and he plans really well and the workouts are really structured.”
Smith believes that the new workouts are a factor in the team improving.

“It feels like it’s all really well planned–that everything does have a reason, that it’s not all just scrapped together last minute,” Smith said.

Junior Trenton Artica believes Hobb’s experience has played a big factor in the team’s improvement.

“The coach last year was a lot more inexperienced than Hobbs is now because back in the day he used to coach a lot of cross country,” Artica said.

Artica adds that another reason the team is improving is that team is always encouraging each other.

“We’re more aware of where everyone’s at on the team,” Artica said. “And try and improve individuals as we can improve them to get them as a good whole.”

Artica is leading the way for the team as he go a top ten finish out of 315 at Hagen Oaks on September 29.

Teammate senior Max Cerecedes is happy to see Artica get success but isn’t surprised by it.

“I wasn’t surprised. I know that he is a very good runner he typically gets top ten, top five depending on the race,” Cerecedes said. “We were not surprised, but I was proud of him for that.”
According to Smith, the best runner is not up for debate.

“It’s kinda hard not to say Trenton just because he’s the fastest on the team,” Smith said. “He’s just been doing consistently just really well ever since his first year running.”

Artica likes to encourage his teammates to keep pushing even when they feel like they cannot keep pushing forward.

“I try really encouraging the younger guys to try and get up there and don’t be intimidated, that you can do more than what you think you can,” Artica said.

Artica sees a bright future ahead for the team and hopes to build on their success heading into this year.

“Long stretch would be sections, but short would be just improving and getting third in CVC easy,” Artica said. “Hopefully next year as we keep working down to get hopefully second or first.”