Varvel Family: Panther Cross Country!

In the past, the middle school cross country team has been coached as part of the high school team. But, the sport is growing in popularity, and the teams have grown too large for one coach to handle both. So they asked me to coach the Rocky Mountain runners this year. I LOVED every second of it! The opportunity came at a perfect time. Sawyer left on his mission, and these awesome kids helped fill the void in my heart I felt from him leaving. They were exactly what I needed!

Bailey finished up her middle school cross country years with a heck of a season! I'm so proud of how dedicated she is, how hard she works, and how she loves and treats her teammates. I'm sad her middle school cross country days are over, but I'm super excited to see how she does with the longer high school distance next year.

We kicked off our season at the Saucony Scramble. It was SO hot! Several runners from other teams were treated at the finish line by paramedics.

Bailey: 19th out of 173 runners

Saucony Scramble

Bailey finishing

The next meet was the Cardinal Classic. My teams did AWESOME!

Bailey: 6th out of 156 runners

Cardinal Classic

Check out these speedy girls!
Bailey, Jessiny, and Maylie

They always find plenty of time to play after they run :)!
Shelese, Maylie, Bailey, Emma, Michaela, Hannah, & Whitnee

After the Cardinal Classic, we had a s'mores team social at my house. These crazy kids are hilarious!

Team social

We got kicked out of a relay meet that ended up getting too crowded. So, we held our own Panther Relays! The kids did awesome and were such good sports. We divided the kids up into teams of 5 runners each. They had to come up with a team name, cheer, and do whatever they wanted to show team spirit. The teams went above and beyond what I expected! The course was 1 mile around Community Park, and was run relay style. It was so fun!

Bailey's team was the 'Sock it to Em Kick Butt Ninjas'.
Evy, Bailey, Hannah, Tanner, and Jaren

Panther Relays

The next meet was the Crossroads Point Challenge. This meet was 2.5 hours away, so I thought the kids would be bored out of their minds on the bus. They actually ended up having tons of fun on the drive!

Bailey: 2nd out of 45 runners

Bailey is a great starter. She went out hard and led most of the race. She held on as long as she could, and didn't get passed until the last 800 meters or so. One thing is for sure, she runs with guts!

Crossroads Point Challenge

Goof balls!

Bailey and Jakob

Snuggling at very cold practice

Donuts for being such hard workers at practice.

We had 2 meets in one week. I was worried about how Bailey would hold up, because we had worked them hard in practice that week too. It ended up being the best week of her season. She ran gutsy and with confidence. It was cold in Ririe, but Bailey seems to do better in cold weather.

Bailey: 2nd out of 103 runners

Ririe

Later that week we ran in Balckfoot. This is a flat, fast course. Bailey has done good on this one since 6th grade. She was very mentally tough at this race, and I was so proud of her!

Bailey: 4th out of 68 runners

I love these crazy kids!

Yay Panthers!

She took the race out hard, and then just tried to stay tough and hold on at the end.

Bailey and Jessiny both had great races!

This is the point in the season where things started to get tough for her. She got sick the day of the Madison meet. She still ran good, but not as good as she had hoped. She was disappointed because Aunt Kim was there to watch her, and she wished she would have done better.

Bailey: 14th out of 75 runners

Madison

I had never thought this before until I saw this picture, but I think Bailey and Kim look a lot alike.

The last race of the season was in Firth. Bailey was still really sick, and she puts a lot of pressure on herself. She just wanted to finish the season up strong. She was having some other 'issues', and was emotionally and physically in the dumps. She got herself so stressed out, that she was in tears before the race even started. She has done really good over the past year of keeping her anxiety in check, but it was back in full force at this meet. She didn't run very well, and that just set off a couple really tough weeks for her. I think it's good for kids to have set backs, and not always come out on top. I think they can learn good lessons from that. I wanted her to understand that running is something she does, not who she is. Her worth is not based on how well she does in cross country or anything else. It's something she really struggles with. She was out of her slump in a couple weeks, and back to her normal crazy self.
Bailey: 19th out of 101 runners