The Boys and Girls Varsity cross country team traveled out to the annual Chile Pepper Cross Country Festival, in Fayetteville, Ark.
“It was awesome.” cross country boys head coach, John Hamilton said. “It was too hot though, which is the only complaint you could have for the festival. But it’s called chili pepper festival so it’s hot. And, you know, that’s, I think festival is the right word to kind of call it because they have races for kids, adults, middle school, elementary school, high school, college, all on the same weekend.”
The event lasted two days, with multiple races consisting of open 5k’s and the most popular competitive 5k race the “El Caliente” 5k. To spice things up there was “The Godpepper 10k,” which was the largest race in the event, and the longest.
“The boys performed okay, not great and not bad,” Hamilton said. “The weather always plays such an important factor in distance running. We were just dealing with like round two of elements on the team. We had four of our top five runners out, they missed school days and practices last week.”
The varsity teams had a good overall run, and some of the boys and girls runners had set new personal records or tied there current ones.
“It was actually quite nice this year,” senior runner Collin Lipps said. “Though, the races, they were hot, but I tied my PR, and I was bottom 15 in the race.”
The Chile Pepper Festival was another great experience for the Varsity McGuinness XC teams. They will return next year to compete again.
The runners are continuing to tread on with regionals coming up towards the end of October.
