University of Richmond Athletics
Taylor's Take: Our Season, My Story
12/02/2011 | Cross Country
Editor's Note: Cross country freshman and Richmond native Taylor Clevinger will share her thoughts and experiences in an ongoing blog that offers readers an inside look into life as a Spider on the course, in the classroom and around campus. Below is her final entry of the season.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and was able to enjoy delicious food and time with family. I had an awesome holiday because my mom's homemade stuffing and my dad's smoked turkey are both incredible. Also, being able to spend time with my family really meant a lot to me because I had not seen most of them in a while. I am so thankful for having them in my life.
Other than the feast that my family made on Thanksgiving day, I really enjoyed going fishing with my dad and his friend over the break as well. We caught about 20 rockfish, and it was definitely one of the highlights of my vacation.
I'm also having a hard time believing this cross country season is already over! It seems like just yesterday my roommate Clare Moretz and I unpacked all of our things in our cozy little room and headed for the mountains with the team for preseason camp. Looking back, all of us freshmen were nervous and excited for the new journey, but we had some awesome upperclassmen to help us learn the ropes. Personally, cross country has not usually been my favorite of the three running seasons, but since joining this team I have enjoyed every minute of it!
A couple weekends ago the team ran at the NCAA Division I Southeast Regional meet in Kentucky. For up to the minute results nothing is better than Coach Taylor's Twitter (I actually just got a Twitter account, too, so follow me @TayClev!).
The men's team was led by Chris York and ran really well to finish 19th overall and close a great cross country season. The women's team came in 14th and had some really awesome races, including Jill Prentice leading the Spiders with her 26th-place finish!
Both the men and women ran very well this whole season, and no matter what was thrown at us-hurricanes, earthquakes or screaming flight attendants (Clare Moretz)-we finished the season strong with hard work and integrity.
Now it's track time! The middle distance runners who also ran cross country (Alyson McGonigle, Andi DeFonce and I) had some time off from practice, where we just ran easy on our own. I missed running with the entire team, but it was a lot of fun running with Alyson and Andi, too.
We just started our track workouts, and they are going really well. We were so excited to be on the track doing speed work again. We recently got to do our workout with some of the long sprinters and Coach Lambert, which made it a lot of fun because they are great group to be around and we all push each other to go faster. We could not wipe the smile off of our faces because we knew track season was here.
I have really enjoyed telling you all about my first season as a Spider. I loved every minute of the cross country season and am sad to see it end, but we will all be back running around the track shortly. Thanks again for reading.
Happy Holidays and GO SPIDERS!
Players Mentioned
