“We are?!” team captain Kieran Bailey yells out to the huddle of his teammates. “Millbrook!” the team replies in excitement after each and every workout. There is a reason for all of this excitement; at the time of publication, the Men’s Cross Country team, or XC, are the sixth ranked team in the state of North Carolina. There is plenty of hype surrounding the XC team this year, and it is well deserved.

Cross Country is a sport that relies on a team’s top five runners in order to determine their score. These top five runners are given points based on their placement in a race. At dual meets, for example, first place receives 1 point, second place receives 2, and so on. Whichever team has the lowest amount of points wins the meet. That is why team depth, the amount of runners capable of scoring points, is an important part of the sport, and Millbrook has plenty of it. On the importance of team depth, junior Nick Scudder said, “Depth defines your team because if you only have one good guy, then you don’t really have a team. We push each other in practice to make sure that we become the best team we can be.”

After losing two of the top ten runners in the state last year, no one expected the boy’s team to bounce back. However, under the coaching of Dustin Adams and Bradley McClure, the team was able to reload after significant improvement from returning athletes. Nick Scudder, a junior, leads the pack in terms of time, having a personal record, or PR, of 15:58 in a 5k. Ryan and Andy Bennison are twins on the course and off, as they have an identical PR of 16:29. Ayden Mosler is fourth with a PR of 16:57, and the final scorer is the Josh Navarro, a freshman, with a PR of 17:01.

Confidence is at an all-time high after beating some of the top teams in the state at the Hare and Hounds Invitational. As senior Andy Bennison said, “Nothing feels better than beating expectations, even those by Milesplit, but I’m more focused on the bigger meets coming up, such as regionals and the state championships.” Stay on the lookout for the XC team. They are not just a sleeper team anymore; they are now a formidable state contender