Will Alden was Santa at our Holiday Bazaar.  And he's on my rec ball team.

Our blog is now supporting the cause Stand Up to Cancer.  This is an organization that helps support the fight to find a cure for cancer.  Also, the organization raises funds to try and find  cure for cancer and help people that have cancer.  They are also linked with lots of partners like Comcast, MasterCard, Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer research and Major League Baseball.  This cause will hopefully help many patients and their families who are struggling with cancer.  The link is on our twitter and the bottom of this post you can check it out for yourself and contribute if you feel like it.

http://standup2cancer.org/

Eco Friendly Running Shoes

Brooks running company has come out with a new pair of running shoes called green silence. It's made of 75% recycled post consumer material.

DCLs

Next Friday is the DCLs. Everyone on the team is allowed to compete in them and this year it's at Franklin Park. The course is 3 miles. On the day of he DCLs, our team leaves school after first lunch so we can be on time to the race and not be late for the start of the first race. Also, our DCl consists of Westford, AB, LS, Waltham, Weston,. Tyngsboro, Boston Latin, CC, Newton South, Wayland. These are some of the teams we'll be competing against but there will be a lot more teams when we get there.

Baystate Marathon

This Sunday, we volunteered at the Baystate marathon. We worked the 10-12 shift and helped hand out water and gatorade to the runners. Also, we got free neon t-shirts for volunteering. Some of the people on the team dressed up in Halloween costumes. The average time for a runner was 4 hours and 3 minutes. The fastest male time was 2 hours 22 minutes and the fastest women time was 2 hours 55 minutes. Our station was the 16 mile marker of the race but after about an hour of handing out water there were no more runners.

WA vs. AB and Bedford Meet

Yesterday, we had a home meet and the course is 3 miles long. Pat Turpin came in 3rd for varsity boys with a time of 15:40. He came in fist for WA. For the girls varsity, Tia Caldwell got first place overall with a time of 17:45. Coming in first for JV boys was Nikhil Kyathappala with a time of 17:10. Everyone has improved their time since the beginning of the season and everyone got a personal record. It was our last home meet of the season and for the seniors it was their last regular season meet, because after this meet everyone competes in DCLs.

This video is about the first WA XC meet last year against Newton South. Newton won overall and Slick ended up getting second place, one of the few times he ever has, coming behind David Melly. In the JV girls race, WA won but in the girls varsity race, the girls lost to the Newton South team. This race started off last season on a bad note, but we still managed to do well during the remainder of the XC season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCdkqQMApfY

WAXC Football

When practice starts at 3 o'clock, the cross country team plays football until practice starts. The two captions/quarterbacks of the teams are Will Alden and Harrison Saro. During the last game Will Alden threw for 60 plus yards giving his team a 14 point lead. Harrison Saro threw for 30 plus yards. After the first half, Will's team was winning by 7 points and increased that lead by another 7 points to make the final score 28 to 14. One highlight from the game was when Ben Katz ran for 50 yards to score a touchdown for Will's team. That is a summary from the latest WAXC Football game.

XC Meets

Every Wednesday our cross country team has a meet. This week we went to Waltham for our meet. All of the teams won their race. The race was a little shorter than our home course and since it was a little cool out it made running easier. The race was a good race, but the course was kind of boring because there was no track to start out on, so we ran around a field. then in the woods, some people got lost because the course was confusing at some points because there were too many turns. Overall the meet was good because WA came out with the win.

XC

Our blog is about Westford Academy Cross Country. In this blog we will talk about our daily schedule in cross country. We will also talk about what we do during practice and during our meets. Also, we'll discuss the canister drive the team does every year and the New York trip we go on very year too. Another topic will be the meets and how they work. Finally, we will talk about attendance and how that affects being able to participate in fun events in cross country. These are the topics we will talk about in our blog that is below.

In cross country, we start practice at the track with two warm-up laps, followed by stretching and sets of pushups and crunches. After that, we do form drills on the turf. After this we begin our workouts where we divide into different groups based on our ability and run on different trails at different speeds. During meets, we run on the team that's closest to our ability. Most of the captains run varsity, but some run jv. Finally, during the meets, people like Will Alden and others are very encouraging to all the runners. This is what it's like to be a part of WA XC.