By: Jocelyn Spinelli '27  

For the 2025-2026 school year, the Cross Country team just finished up their season. They did another joint co-op with Highlands, including seven athletes, six of them being Saint Joseph High School students. Something the team strives for is more athletes to join the team and maybe even to have their own team.

 “I definitely enjoyed it, the coach was nice, the team was welcoming, and I really became a better runner,” said Ava Myers, class of ‘29. I asked Ava what she enjoyed so much about joining the team for her first year. She never ran before and she adjusted well. Advice she would give to other students would be: “Make sure you are in shape, and honestly just run a lot.”

Ava will continue to run for the rest of her high school years at Saint Joseph High School and hopes for a bigger and better team.

I also had the opportunity to interview another student, Jordyn Cienik has been very involved in running her whole life and is a second year cross country runner for the Saint Joseph Highlands co-op. 

She explained to me the disadvantage they have when competing without a team, due to the low number of athletes. “Not everyone can run in WPIALS and we lose the opportunity to be scored as a team also at individual meets,” said Jordyn Cienik ‘28.

The advice Jordyn would give to the runners who would want to join the team but are too scared would be: “It does not matter how well you run. You get to have fun and make good memories”.