On Friday, the Coppell cross country team competed at the District 6-6A Cross Country Meet at North Lakes Park in Denton. The boys retained their title as reigning district champions, finishing first for the second year in a row.
With a closing score of 39, this win qualifies the boys for the Class 6A Region 1 Championship at Mae Simmons Park in Lubbock on Tuesday.
“I knew this was going to come down to us and Flower Mound and whoever ran better,” Coppell coach Landon Wren said. “Flower Mound ran well, but we just ran better.”
Senior Henry Henze placed first overall with a 15:35, 5K time.
“I feel great, especially for the team but for myself as well because I haven’t been performing as well as I wanted to all season,” Henze said. “The way our training is structured allows us to run faster as the season goes on. We don’t start out fast, we sort of hover around there. We want to peak our performances at the right time, and we’re getting to that.”
Senior Samarth Dubey placed fifth with a 15:58 time, sophomore Rohit Kalpathy placed eighth with a 16:07 time and junior Pranav Vegiraju placed ninth with a 16:10 time.
“Something that we’ve done this year that’s different from last year is we do one workout a week instead of two during the season,” Henze said. “This lets our body just be able to recover and I really felt that, especially at this meet. We made sure we were able to feel good during the race.”
Coppell sophomore Ansh Singhal ran his best race of the season as Coppell’s fifth ranked runner from the meet.
Though the Cowgirls concluded their season placing fourth overall, this was an improvement from their seventh place finish from the previous year.
“We didn’t have any girls qualify last year, so finishing fourth, having two girls qualify and finishing top ten in this district is unbelievable,” Wren said.
Freshman Maya Easterwood placed fourth with an 18:34 time and junior Mallory Sherrer placed 10th with a 19:15 time, both qualifying for regionals.
“I feel really accomplished because I’ve never been able to do this before,” Sherrer said. “The biggest difference is the amount of confidence between last year’s meet and this year’s district event, as I definitely felt more confident and prepared to compete at this year’s meet.”
The JV teams’ seasons have also come to an end with a first place win for the boys and a fourth place win for the girls.
To prepare for Lubbock, Wren offers his team one piece of advice.
“On the day of the meet, enjoy it,” Wren said. “Enjoy the competition. Sometimes you get so worked up in the moment that you forget to have fun. With that said, you’ve got to stick to your race plan, you’ve got to do everything you can to give yourself a chance on race day to have success. I want us to have fun but the most fun thing about running is winning. We’re going out there to qualify for state.”
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