The boys cross country team had their first invitational of the season on September 7. Although the team did not perform as well as they had hoped, they still put up a good fight. Junior Ryan Johnson led the Sequoits and set the pace early on for the rest of the team, running an 18:40 3-mile.

“I feel like we need more runners to keep up with the rest of us,” senior cross country runner Kole Powers said. “I think that our team has a lot of talent, but we just need to make tweaks to our team so that we can become stronger.”

Although having senior Charlie Smith out of the race put the Sequoits at a disadvantage, they still made sure to push themselves as hard as they could in order to gain points.

“This race allowed [the team] to see how far we have progressed since the start of the season,” senior cross country runner Luke Menzies said. “We just need to progress and slowly work on increasing our pace, so that we can stay with the pack.”

The boys cross country team was unable to win the meet, but the race gave them a huge lesson on what they need to work on. They hope to use this learning experience as motivation for the team to work even harder during practices.

The Sequoits plan to practice hard until they face-off against the Grayslake Central Rams and the Wauconda Bulldogs on September 17.