By J1 Reporter Maggie Prosser

At a beautiful 60 degrees, on Sept. 30, cross country girls were looking forward to finishing their Walk-A-Thon (WAT) run and going home for the weekend. Girls were expecting to run, but were surprised by the normal practice. The route for cross country was switched up this year.

“It didn’t feel like WAT, it felt like another practice,” junior Catherine Franco said. The team ran down to Benson Park, which is their normal route after school, and timed two different versions of a race course, while the rest of the student body walked anywhere from one to four miles in the neighborhood to the north of Marian.

“It felt like a normal day of practice, we just got done sooner,” junior Lauren Klingemann said. In the late 90s, runners would tackle the six mile course in the Keystone area like everyone else, but they started sooner. The volleyball team also formerly joined the team.

The cross country runners missed out on the “real” WAT experience, but they bonded as a team with yet another practice in the middle of the morning. Runners enjoyed the pleasure of wearing their class color t-shirts, but that’s about as far as the spirit went.

Having the cross country team not run the regular course, made the team feel a little left out from the rest of the school. It’s a great example seeing Marian girls come together as a team and “sacrifice” a day as special as Walk-A-Thon.