Lucas Cochran / Staff Writer

The season of winning continues for the Lady Bulldogs cross country team. 

     The team placed 8th overall at the their biggest moment of the year, the state meet. The team reached new heights, and that was a huge part of the reason for them doing so well at states. 

     All the runners had different views going into this race. 

      “I was a little nervous for the race, and my main focus was just to impress with my time,” sophomore star runner Jayla Atkinson said. Jayla ended up doing extremely well at the race, placing 30th overall. 

     Another star runner of the Lady Bulldogs was sophomore Deena Ingrassia; she took a different route to states.

“I wasn’t as nervous as I normally am because there was nowhere else to go after states,” Ingrassia said. 

     Another runner, junior Sydney Pitcovich, had been running through an injury her whole season, and what she did at states was a performance she won’t want to forget.

“The state meet was different from others because of the competitive atmosphere,” Pitcovitch said. “I treated the race just like it was any other race, so my stress level was a lot lower.” 

     All of the runners at states did extremely well.

“All of the runners had a lot of fun hanging out and just being able to share the experience,” Atkinson said.

     These girls have all been working since June for this goal, which was their main goal overall this season and set in August. They were thrilled to achieve it.  

     The Lady Bulldogs had a huge walkout from the high school, and then visited Highland and Lakeview, walking in the parking lot, reading signs from the younger students.

     The team said that was a great start to an amazing weekend; being able to visit the younger schools and hearing them so excited got the athletes pumped up.

      A very big accomplishment for the team was the top five runners earned times all under twenty minutes.  

     Senior Kendra Cassiday received a new personal record at this meet with a time of 19:16.1 and finished 63rd in the field of 184 runners.

     Cassiday mentioned her main goal this season was to make states not just with the team, but as herself individually, as well. At regionals she did just that, placing 32nd and taking the last individual spot to states.  The team overall performed extremely well and Stow hopes to see many more great seasons ahead of this one.