Cross country finds new ways to practice

As COVID-19 cases rose and campus closed, sports teams were forced to find alternatives to on-campus practice. Among these teams was cross country, who has not had an in-person practice since this summer, Sophomore Koyo Kai said in a phone interview.

Since the team has been unable to meet in-person, their coach has resorted to assigning workouts online, Kai said. Through a group chat, athletes are able to communicate with each other and monitor their progress, the first-year athlete added.

“We do the workouts on a GPS app (Strava) where you can track the pace you ran and the distance you ran,” Kai said. “And then the coach can see the run you did on the app.”

However, campus closure has had an impact on the team’s performance, Sophomore Akul Vinnakota said in an email interview. Both the recent California fires and quarantine have forced athletes to stay indoors, he explained.

“Most people were sitting inside, so it made us slower and lazier,” Vinnakota said. “Now we are picking it up again and getting our speed back.”

The team planned in-person practices for December, but those have been postponed due to the new restrictions the county put in place, Vinnakota said. Races have also been pushed back, he added.

“It’s like we made no progress,” he said. “And now we are more limited [from] going outside.”

The cross country team had begun the season with in-person conditioning, Coach Yohaness Estifanos said in an email interview. However, circumstances drove them indoors, he added.

We started conditioning over the summer in pods, following the guidelines of our county’s social distancing protocol,” Estifanos said. “After a little while, the smoke from the wildfire interrupted our training, making it unsafe to run outdoors for a while. So we incorporated exercises that can be done indoors to maintain fitness and could only run outdoors when the air quality was safe.”

Despite the delays and difficulties the purple tier brought on, the athletes were keeping up with practice, Estifanos said. But for now, the team will keep their activities virtual, he added.

“It’s been difficult not being able to train together as a team while on quarantine, but the kids are doing their best running on their own, doing the assigned workouts,” Estifanos said.

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