Adam Bywater set a goal to become a varsity runner for the cross country team. He knew that this goal wouldn’t be easy to accomplish, but he worked hard and trained constantly during the summer.  

Unlike most runners, Adam played football his freshman year.  As a sophomore he decided to try cross country.

“A lot of my friends had been pressuring me to do cross country, and I just kind of decided that football wasn’t really my thing. I wasn’t super great at it, and I wanted to try something new.”  

Adam ended up breaking his goal last season by over a minute and a half.

“Last year my season goal at the beginning of the year was to go sub 20 (minutes). I ended up running at 18:18.” 

After breaking his goal and seeing how well the team performed at state, Adam really bought into the sport.

“Last year, I went to the state meet and I watched those guys, you know, perform really well. They got third. They stood up on the balcony. I kind of just thought I want to do that, I want to be there.”  

There were two seniors on the cross country team last year leaving two vacant spots on the team.

“I definitely was thinking about that, what spots were opening up. Last year I was thinking about who I was competing with for those spots, and I’m still competing with. It’s a tight battle.”

Over the summer Adam became one of the most consistent runners on the team in an attempt to win that battle. 

“I was just really building miles hitting mostly 40-45 (miles) in the summer consistently and then now that we’re in season, the mileage has been even higher to start out.”  

And now that Adam has won himself one of those spots on varsity, he looks forward to state and who their competition will be. 

“I think if there’s one team that could beat us at state it’s Dowling. Dowling is returning a lot of their top five runners and they have some really good guys.” 

But the team is focused on how they are going to run, they don’t care about what Dowling is running. They have zeroed in on becoming the best they can be.

“I think we’re really just trying to focus on us, our training, and being the best that we can be. We haven’t really been focusing on what they’re doing, we’re kind of trying not to focus too much on the times they run because every course is different.”   

Adam is looking forward to having the best season that he has ever had in his running career, and one of the best seasons that the team has ever seen.