Runners to start training next week

By Sam Waller

Participants in the Albany Lions and Lady Lions cross country program will report for the start of preseason workouts at 8:00 a.m. Monday, Aug. 1 at the high school gym foyer.

The new season sees the return of coach Ginger Norton, who last coached the program in 2013. Norton, who was also the Lady Lions track coach from 2001 through 2017, has been working mostly with elementary and junior high grades in recent years.

“We will be doing some morning workouts for about a month or so until the weather cools off,” Norton said. “We may have some very short runs in the evenings. Some of the kids are in band and doing other extracurricular things, and I’ve got to work around all that.”

Norton expects about a dozen athletes – seven girls and four or five boys – to run this fall. Having five of each would enable Albany to field full teams for both.

“My goal is to have a team of boys and girls and qualify both for regional,” Norton said. “It’s a lot more fun when you have a group of runners to compete together and motivate each other.”

The teams held a meeting Wednesday, July 27 to go over the schedule and line out the first week.

Sophomore Jonathan Coody qualified for regional as an individual last year. Senior Briley Tabor returns to lead the girls team.

Norton said most of the early training will consist of running on grass as much as possible.

“We’re not going to run on pavement as much,” she said. “We’re going to do more running on the golf course and grass. We’ll be going up to the golf course quite a bit.”

Albany will run its first meet Tuesday, Sept. 6 at Eula, and the athletes will run six meets before district competition. The District 10-2A meet will be Oct. 13 at a site to be determined.