At some level, every cross country team has a story to tell, but this series will be about the teams that have most piqued my interest.
Starting soon, and maybe as soon as tomorrow, I'll begin a series of write-up about teams that just might be creating some serious concerns for the opposition this fall.
To put you on the alert, some of these will be free content and some will be premium content. Early in the series, the proportion of free content installments will be greater than it will be later as the CHSAA-sanctioned season approaches. I get it that some folks will find that frustrating, but the alternative is to make them all premium content.
So as not to put coaches in the position of trying to decide what kind of information to divulge (and not divulge) about their teams, I won't be interviewing coaches for these articles. That has a couple other advantages as well.
One, it helps keep coaches off of the hot spot with team members and parents back home.
Two, if I were to interview coaches for these articles, the number of articles I'd be able to do would be roughly cut in half. Adding coach interviews to the process adds a couple of longish poles to the tent.
As a result, I'll occasionally inadvertently publish some non-current information about teams. Sometimes we'll learn sooner when that has happened, and sometimes we'll learn later. If needed, I'll update articles as that kind of information becomes known.
This series is not to replace previews by classification and gender, previews of top returning runners, or any other kind of preview that may come to mind to publish between now and August 25. It's just that I've never before gone seriously into doing team-by-team interviews and I wanted to try that this summer.
As a bit of a teaser, the first of the team-by-team features will look at the Gunnison boys. The Cowboys finished third at 3A State last fall with a smart and well-executed race plan at the state meet. Can Gunnison springboard off that third-place finish from last fall and make something even bigger of it this fall?
You'll have to check back and find out what kind of case can be made for Gunnison. And Gunnison will just be the first team we look at. Pretty much the rest of the summer will be full of team-by-team previews.
I hope you enjoy these. Each article in the series will have a link at the top of the article (such as you'll find at the top of this article) which will take you to a directory page of all the articles in the series that have been published to date.