With week number two of practice in the books, head coach Collin Shawgo and the ACGC cross country teams near that much closer to first competition.

Although a lot has been accomplished within the two weeks of practice, there are still a number of challenges ahead and one of those challenges includes the transition from other sports to cross country. With various athletes involved in track, there will be a lot of athletes making the transition to the cross country scene and while there are similarities between the two sports, there are also various differences.

Raccoon Valley Radio caught up with coach Shawgo as he explained the biggest difference between the two sports.

“The biggest thing is the changing of the distances because they’re so used to going fast all the time in track season and there aren’t any variations in the landscape in track. Sometimes they start the cross country season with races where they start out too fast and die towards the end,” sounded coach Shawgo.

As for his athletes coach Shawgo feels that work built up to this point has his runners already adapting to the sport.

“I think that the kids have been running a lot this summer and are back to the whole cross country training and so I think they’re going to be ready to go,” stated coach Shawgo.

The Charger cross country squads are less than a week out from their first meet of the season  which will be their home openers on August 24th. The meet will get started at 5:00 pm and will include 12 total teams. Below is a list of all twelve teams in participation:

 

AHSTW,
Audubon,
Des Moines Christian,
East Union,
Exira-Elk-Horn-Kimballton,
Lenox,
Martensdale-St Marys,
Mount Ayr,
Panorama,
Southwest Valley,
Woodward-Granger