Witmer Crosses into States
November 8, 2017
The cross country team has experienced huge levels of success this year with runners making it to counties, districts and the state championship.
Freshman Desiree Witmer is the only varsity runner who made it into states this season.
The state championship was held at Hershey Parkview golf course last Saturday, November 6.
States runner Desiree Witmer laughs as she talks with her teammates.
Prior to the meet, Coach James Lebo had high expectations.
“I think she’ll do well looking at her time versus last year’s times. I think if she’s in the top 100 she’s doing very well,” said Lebo.
Head Coach Jim Lebo leads stretches.
Witmer has had huge support from her friends and teammates alike and has been training all week to prepare for states.
Desiree Witmer does an ab-workout with her team.
Senior varsity cross country runner Erik Younkin was elated about her success.
“Honestly, that was incredible. We were hopeful that she would make it, and when she actually did it at the race, when we saw her come through the first mile, when she as up as far as she was, we kinda lost it a little bit; it was really cool she did well,” said Younkin.
Witmer is not the only one that did well this season, as Lebo said that the entire team as a whole did very well,“stepping up” when their fellow teammate got injured.
Freshman Desiree Witmer [in red] does cherry pickers for her form drills.
The team continually challenged one another during difficult times, and workouts.
After being asked about Lebo’s decision to start speed workouts earlier in the season, Younkin was extremely supportive of the decision.
“I think that running speed workouts early in the season is definitely the best way to do it. It’s how we’ve done it in the past and one of the biggest issues the team had this year was [that] we were too slow at the beginning of the year we needed to get more speed work than just endurance,” said Younkin.
Witmer placed 127 out of over 200 runners at the championship this weekend.