HC Cross-Country has added a new hire to its already successful coaching staff of HC teacher Tommy Craft and Coach Marcus Carmicle. New assistant coach, Liz Dietrich, has made great contributions to this season’s performance. As such, junior Canaan Thomas has set a new school 5K record time. Preparations for the last two months of the season are ongoing.
“[The Cross-Country program] has progressed quite a bit,” Senior and team captain Abbott Renfro said. “The tone and how we interact with each other, it’s just great. We work very hard. We actually went to state as a team together last year, both girls and boys, for the first time in five years.”
Renfro mentions Dietrichs’s dedication as an important addition to HC’s previous successes.
“We have a new coach,” Renfro said. “Her name is Coach Dietrich, she makes the hardest workouts, but she makes sure they’re fun.”
Dietrich has taken a new approach at the team’s training for this season.
“She’s brought new types of training that we didn’t incorporate into our training last year,” Junior Canaan Thomas said. “[The team does] a lot of tempo workouts to help whenever the second mile gets tough to maintain pace.”
At the West Jessamine Invitational on September 9th, Thomas broke the record, becoming HC’s fastest 5K runner.
“[Breaking the record is] really important to me,” Thomas said, “knowing that I’m the fastest guy at Henry Clay ever, their training helped me reach that level of success.”
Other runners have progressed tremendously this season, as well.
“I think we have a lot of girls under twenty [minutes],” Renfro said. “We have all the underclassmen in the front which is kind of unusual, but definitely keeps us bonded.”
Underclassmen are excelling under Dietrich’s leadership and can continue doing so before the season’s end.
“Berea is definitely a PR weekend,” Renfro said. “Just pushing themselves and keeping motivated throughout September and October.”
The girls’ team was victorious in a recent meet, with sophomore Billie Phemister finishing in first place. Both the girls’ and boys’ team qualified for state as a result of their exceptional performance during the regional meet on October 21.
