Photo courtesy of Marvin Gentry/AHSAA.
Vestavia Hills’ Claire Spooner competes in the Class 7A girls race in the AHSAA state cross-country meet held at Oakville Indian Mounds Park on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2021. Photo courtesy of Marvin Gentry/AHSAA.
The Vestavia Hills HIgh School cross-country team is preparing to dominate the competition this upcoming season.
After an “adversarial” season for the boys and a more successful season for the girls team, cross-country coach Richard Anderson is working with each team to overcome different challenges, he said.
The boys team capped off last season with a seventh-place finish at the state championship.
The team was led by junior Will Jordan, who placed 13th in the race with a time of 15:58. Alex Leath (23rd, 16:16), Andrew King (34th, 16:29), Wilson Holt (74th, 17:16), James Bentley (78th, 17:20), Davis Wylie (85th, 17:30) and Mitchell Schaaf (96th, 17:38) all scored points.
Anderson said the boys team is working hard to cooperate more as a team and “buying into” running for each other.
“I think, overall, we underperformed from where we should’ve been,” Anderson said. “We’ve been working really hard to be more of a team and not working individually. Cross-country and track and field are individual sports as well as team sports. Cross-country is more team oriented. We’re really trying to get the boys to buy-in into themselves, each other and into what they’re doing.”
The girls team was more unified than the boys team, Anderson said, leading them to a second-place finish at the state championship.
Former senior Crawford West capped off her high school cross-country career with a stellar race, blistering the competition by over a minute and winning the race with a time of 17:06.
West was followed by Claire Spooner (eighth, 19:08), Kaitlyn Wende (ninth, 19:10), Jasmine Zhang (31st, 19:56), Riley Zeanah (33rd, 20:01), Angela Zhang (39th, 20:05) and Anna Claire Gannon (52nd, 20:32), which gave Vestavia a total of 80 points in the race. Auburn won the team competition with 68 points.
Anderson said he’s partly counting on leaders from the girls team to help freshmen and sophomores on the team improve their skills.
“What we’re doing with them is improving on their skill sets and making them better,” Anderson said. “We’ve got some seniors that are doing a good job of leading and bringing those 10th graders and freshmen into the fold.”
Anderson said his focus with the girls team going into the season is to improve their overall performance.
“We’ve got an opportunity to be better,” Anderson said. “We’ve got more depth, we’ve got a really strong class of 10th graders that are coming on strong and we’ve got some freshmen that are coming in behind them, so they’re going to be good, I think.”
Anderson said he’s excited to see how both teams perform this upcoming season, especially with the spotlight on them.
“I think people are going to be surprised with our performances and I’m really anxious to see all of that come together as we go through the season and watch their performances evolve and get better throughout the year,” Anderson said. “I’m excited for the whole process. I love watching the process of a whole team coming together. I’m looking forward to that with both the boys and the girls.”
