Girls Cross Country returns lots of experience, boys turn to underclassmen
/While the starting lineup for the Sand Springs girls cross country team will look very familiar this season, the boys will be filled with new faces.
After placing 14th at last year’s Regional cross country meet, the Lady Sandites will be returning all but one member from their A team, while the boys will look to replace four members of last year’s 13th place lead card.
“We’ve got a young team, but we’ve got some talented young guys coming up,” said head coach Mike Burdge. “Last year we were coming back from the COVID stuff. We were a little shy in numbers, but we’re picking up a little bit this year.”
The girls will return Gracie Gifford, Lauren Foster, Madison Chambers, and Laila Mirza from last year’s Regional lineup, while the boys will return only Iyon Hood and Michael Johnson.
“We’ve got a couple of kids that are promising. I don’t know what we’ll see from them this year but through the next couple of years we’re going to be moving up so it looks pretty good.”
Taigh Wright and Rafael Huff will likely be immediate contributors after placing 13th and 19th respectively at last year’s junior high conference meet.
The girls will get a boost from freshman Maddyx Hampton, who finished in the top half of last year’s conference meet. “She’s a real solid runner, she’ll do good,” said Burdge.
The Sandites started their speed camp this week, earlier than usual. In the past, Burdge has focused more on building his runners’ conditioning through August. He hopes the change will pay off this fall.
Adding numbers has been a recurring challenge for the program over the years as more and more athletes have begun to specialize in other sports.
Burdge has been trying to stress the conditioning and endurance benefits that cross country can bring to athletes’ primary sports with minimal risk of injury.
“I think we’ll be back on track next year. Back to where we were a couple of years ago on building the program. The middle school has been really picking up in numbers the last two years, so that’s going to start showing in the high school the next couple of years.”
