The Edmond Memorial High School girls cross country team is composed of tenacious and dedicated athletes who have spent countless hours training to achieve their goals. It is not an easy task to break a record, but this season, the EMHS 5K record has been broken three different times, twice by senior Savannah Hull and once by junior Sienna Collins.
Hull broke the 5K record at the Oct. 10 conference meet that took place at Deer Creek High School, finishing in 19 minutes, and 6 seconds, surpassing the previous record of 19 minutes, eight seconds. Two weeks later at the state meet which took place on Oct. 28 at Edmond Santa Fe High School, Hull beat her own record, finishing in 19 minutes, 4 seconds, surpassing the record by two seconds.
“This is something I have been working on for a long time,” Hull said. “It felt like the effort had paid off.”
Later at the same state meet Collins broke the record for the third time this season, finishing at 18 minutes, 35 seconds, surpassing Hull’s record by a whopping 25 seconds.
“This season has been pretty hard for me,” Collins said. “Finally breaking the record felt great.”
Breaking the school record three times in a row proves EMHS’s excellence, and it also shows the training plan is working which ensures overall athlete wellness by promoting plenty of sleep, lots of hydration and an excellent nutrition plan.
“We train our athletes holistically,” girls cross country coach Lisa Shinn said. “We work hard on the physical side of running fast, but we are sure to spend time in recovery and protect athletes’ bodies and minds.”
A lot more than running goes into breaking this type of record. For example, coaches also experimented with cross training over the summer on top of their regular training to ensure athletes were in the best shape possible to run this fall season.
“We did a lot of swimming, biking, jogging and obviously the typical running training,” cross country coach Ansen Covin said. “There was a lot of hard work leading up to this moment to be the best they could be.”
The EMHS cross country team has been doing excellent, and they only seem to be doing better. By using different training methods and ensuring athletes are in a state of wellness, they have been able to break all these records and plan to be state contenders in the following years.
Contact Noelia Ocampo at [email protected]
