Cross-country returned from state on November 13 to a warm welcome after the last meet of the season. The girls took home the second consecutive State title while the boys placed eighth.

“I am so happy for the team,” junior Katie Ruhala said. “Even though it was a rough day for me I felt good that I did my part for the team and we got the gold!”

A contender for the individual state title, Ruhala was slowed down by injury, falling just short of her second

“I was very disappointed because I got second,” Ruhala said. “The girl beat me by a few seconds. But now I am just that much more motivated, I will face her again in track and I am just going to push myself to my limits until then.”

Ruhala has been injured for most of the season and had just recently started training again.

“I am going to do everything I can to not get injured again,” Ruhala said. “I think that is what really hurt me this time.”

Though she may not have reached her personal goal, Ruhala was still proud of the team.

While Ruhala came up short, some new blood on the team helped clinch the championship. A recent transfer from Allen, junior Lindsey Cox is the newest addition to the Varsity girls team, and proved a valuable asset to the team by placing third within the team, and twelfth overall.

“It’s really exciting,” Cox said. “We have been training since summer, and we knew we were in as good of shape as we were going to be. For the two weeks before state we just rested up so we would be most prepared.”

Cox and Ruhala are the only juniors on varsity. The rest of the winning lineup was made up of seniors Rachel Gleason (who placed 2^nd), Jenna Locklear (34^th), and Alex Monroe (97^th ). Along with freshmen Abby Tedford (14^th) and Rebecca Gleason (38^th), the girls took home the second consecutive Girls Cross-country State championship.

“It was awesome,” Ruhala said. “Most teams don’t get to say that [they won two state titles in a row].”

After the race, the team didn’t know if they had won until the results were evaluated and posted a few hours later.

“They print out the standings and post them on a wall,” Cox said. “We had to fight through this massive crowd to get up there and look at them and then we saw ‘first place-Lovejoy.’ We were all pretty pumped.”

The boys team also competed well in the State meet, and finished eighth out of twelve. Senior Matthew Markert led the team, finishing 20^th and completing the 3.1 miles in under 17 minutes. After Matthew was junior Michael Jones in 51^st, senior Christian Martinez in 61^st, junior Evan Hartter in 69^th, senior Tyler Blythe in 74^th, freshman Grant Ballard in 76^th, and junior AJ Srivastava in 94^th. Although the team was not completely satisfied with their results, they believe that they did all they could.

“It wasn’t our best run,” Michael Jones said. “But we all did our best. It just wasn’t our year.”