Rebuilding year for Rebel runners
With Mac Macoy now at Florida and Peyton Price running for the Crimson Tide, this is a rebuilding year for the Vestavia Hills cross country team. Macoy and Price anchored a Rebels team that won the state championship – Vestavia’s first in 6A – in 2012 and finished second in 2013.
Macoy was the 2013 Gatorade Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year for Alabama. With Macoy and Price graduated and plenty of well-stocked teams competing in the new Class 7A, coach Brett Huber knows winning will be tough this year.
“This is probably the biggest rebuilding year we’ve had in several years,” said Huber, who starts his 16th season at Vestavia.
Among those replacing Macoy, a two-time state champion, and Price on the boys team are a quartet of runners that Huber expects to step up – sophomore Alec Beers, senior Blane Crowder and juniors Charlie Sharbel and Hampton Dortch.
Beers, a sophomore, is coming off an injury from last year.
“He would have been one of the better freshmen last year,” Huber said.
Beers said the team knows this is supposed to be a rebuilding year, but their expectations remain high.
“Knowing we’re not the favorites, we’ve been training real hard,” he said. “We don’t really have that one standout guy.”
Sharbel agrees that it is a rebuilding year but said the team is ready to “step up with what our seniors did” in 2013.
“Mac and Peyton were easy points that we could all rely on,” Sharbel said. “Now we all have to step up.”
They’ll have to step it up against some traditional powers and familiar cross country rivals like Mountain Brook, Hoover, Spain Park, Oak Mountain and Hewitt-Trussville.
“Definitely Mountain Brook has an incredible record. Hoover has a strong team coming back,” Huber said. “And Spain Park has a lot of girls returning. It’s just very hard to win. You have to be very deep.”
The Rebels girls squad is anchored by sophomore Catherine Bunch, an all-state selection as a freshman. But the strength of the girls team, Huber said, is its unity more than any individual runner.
“This team, they run together, they train together, they race together,” Huber said. “That’s what makes them special.”
So special, he said, that this year’s squad “is the best girls distance group since I’ve been here.” Bunch said the Rebels girls hang together not only on the course but during their free time as well.
“I think that really helps build the team up,” she said.
The Rebels get their first test of the season on Aug. 30 when they travel to Rome, Ga., for the opening Clara Bowl Invitational meet at Berry College.