Leadership and accountability have been the defining characteristic of Westside’s cross country team as they prepared for their coming season. All throughout the summer, runners have put in unbelievable amounts of time to try and raise their ceiling. Members of the team have ran hundreds and hundreds of miles in preparation for the season, and to get a headstart on other runners.

“We had eight guys earn a 400 mile club shirt, which means that you made it to 400 mile or over. We had some guys that were actually over 550 miles even and so some people have put some serious time in and that makes me certainly optimistic for what their potential is significantly,” said head coach Andrew Easton.

Easton believes that the more time runners put in, they will have more potential to run faster, and for longer.

“It’s really just about that ceiling, I think if you’re able to develop a base during the summer It allows you when we start practice to already begin working on race shape, and pure speed , If you already have a base under you it helps you maximize the potential of the workouts to make you better right from the start of the season instead of having to get into shape” said Easton

With many runners already in race shape, much of the focus has been on senior Ethan Goldner. During Goldner’s junior campaign he was the highest place non-senior at state coming in fourth overall. Now coming into the 2018 season as the number one ranked runner, it leads many to wonder what the next step is.

“With his abilities he’s going to be on an island a lot at practice, and at meets, so were really looking forward to all the nuances with race strategy that were going to get to implement this year because he’s going to be running closer to the front than ever before, and with him we get a lot better as a team as the season progresses, so watching that progression from start to finish is going to be really exciting” said Andrew.

For Goldner, heading into his senior season ranked number one presents new challenges.

“I think for him really the biggest challenge or what’s going to shape his year is he had to start to run on his own without Milo and some of the guys that had been there and been really successful beforehand to kind of pull him through workouts, and run with him on long runs during practice.”

While Goldner is the front runner for the warriors this year, many others have come into their own as a result of work that they put in in the offseason.

“Max frost is really talented and in the past has maybe not gotten the kind of summer he has put in, he got to 400 miles for the first time and I’m looking for him to really take a big step forward this season” Easton said.

With the Warriors having the number one runner in the state, and many talented guys who put in the necessary effort during the offseason to be great, Easton is excited to see how his runners place.

“ I look at our back end of varsity and our top end of JV, it’s going to be competitive, we have really talented guys, we have a great freshman class that came in that have been really hard workers and I’ve been really impressed with that entire group, and our sophomore junior returners a lot of our guys our getting taller and stronger. So it’s going to be interesting to see how that all shakes out” Easton said.

Easton said that  the leadership has been phenomenal, and is one of the defining characteristics of the team.

“We asked our guys who were returners, and the leaders of our team whether it’s Ethan Goldner, Stone Weber, Samir Ali, we pulled up two juniors as well, Max Frost, and Jacob Caffey. So we asked the five of them to really lead us. It was awesome to put those guys in a leadership position. Our three seniors have been phenomenal, and I feel really fortunate to have great leadership with our program” Easton said.

With the depth of talent the Warriors have this year, ranging from the best in the state to guys who are finally taking the leap and coming into their own on varsity, it’s going to be a telling year for Ethan Goldner and the Warriors as a whole.