After long months of training, and literally hundreds of miles of running, the Tuscarora High School Boys and Girls Cross Country teams are headed to the state competition this Saturday at Hereford high school in Parkton, Maryland. Cross Country is both a team and an individual sport and the championship event on Saturday will determine both the winning teams and also winning individuals in the state of Maryland.

Individual competition is easily understood, the fastest runners will be crowned the victors. For the team competition it’s a little more complicated, each team member’s placement contributes to the team total: for instance, if a runner comes in at the seventh position, the team is given seven points. All the differing placements are added up and the team with the lowest total score wins the competition.

Tuscarora’s teams qualified for the state competition by finishing high enough in regional competition to qualify. The boys finished 6th place overall in the regional competition while the girls finished 4th place overall. In total 47 teams qualified for the state championships on Saturday. This alone is an incredible accomplishment because to be one of the 47 best teams in a state of over 450 high schools is pretty rare territory.

Junior Briley Sanford summed it up well by explaining that simply making it to states is an awesome accomplishment. “All season long, since July, our primary goal was just to make it to states, so no matter what happens on Saturday, there’s no disappointment with us, we worked hard and never gave up and we’ve met our goal!” With that being said, however, Briley admits that, while there will be no disappointment, they are still hoping for a top 25 finish and making the top 15 would be in her words “pretty amazing”.

Regardless of what happens we, at the Titan Times, would like to congratulate our Titan athletes for this tremendous accomplishment, we are all so proud of you! And we obviously wish our runners the best of luck in their individual and team competitions on Saturday!!!