Welcome to Farmington High Cross Country
For those interested in doing cross country this year we will be starting up practices in the summer time Starting Wednesday June 5th. We will first meet at the school, check the blog weekly for weekly practice schedules with times and locations. If you are interested in signing up for summer training, please fill this form out: 2025 Farmington Cross Country Summer Training Registration
Parents can receive updates about the season by joining the following groupme (announcements only). I will post links to our website with the updated information. If you do not want to be in the groupme you can check our website, but it's a bit harder to know when the information will be posted.
At the conclusion of summer training our official season will begin on August 4th. Training will fluctuate between mornings and afternoons until school begins, at which point practices will be held during 8th period and after school. More on that below.
Cross Country Parent Meeting
TBA
Summer Practice Starts:
Summer Practice Starts:
Wednesday, June 5th, 7 AM @ FHS (Between the school and the stadium - note that this is a different spot than past years)
Summer Training
Summer practices will be held most Monday/Wednesday/Friday beginning at 7 AM. The purpose of summer is to build a base and strengthen the team. We will steadily build up weekly mileage in preparation for the fall racing season. Mileage will be determined namely by a "percentage" of a maximum volume which will be individualized depending on the athletes' experience and current fitness level. Many of our returning boys will work up to 50ish miles per week, and the returning girls will work towards 40ish miles per week. Newer runners will be somewhere between 20-40, but again, will be built up beginning from about 50% of their max mileage. Daily mileage will be given based on the weekly total one is shooting for.
The goal is to build a base, not over-work the athletes, so the majority of the mileage will be easy/moderate without hard/intense miles. Closer to August we will start to incorporate more "race-specific" workouts to get them prepared for races and being at their best for region, state, and beyond.
Generally, on Mondays and Fridays we will meet at various parks and begin our runs from there. On Wednesdays we plan to meet at "Vita" (the Bonneville shoreline trail beginning near the animal shelter in Kaysville).
Summer Cost:
Summer Cross Country Cost = $50
-Includes participation in summer training and a BSN technical t-shirt
*Anyone 8th-12th grade is welcome to come train with us during the summer whether you are doing the fall season with us or not. 8th graders are only able to train in the summer. Once the season starts, 8th graders cannot continue to train with the team.
Cross Country Camp (optional):
Cross Country Camp (optional):
When: July 27-30
Where: Cottonwood C at Rendezvous Beach, Bear Lake State Park, Utah
Cost: tbd. Between the cost of the camp, food, transport, etc, I hope that the cost is at, or below, $100 per person. That number will be updated as we get closer and we know how many kids we have.
We will be holding our camp on the dates above at Bear Lake.
We'll need people and parents who are willing to drive athletes up, stay and help chaperone/provide transport, cook, provide tents, grills, canopies, beach games, and more.
I will send out a sign up genius for help, but for now, if you know for sure you'd like to come, please let me know.
Tentative Schedule: - Subject to change
June 5th - Summer XC Starts
June 30- July 6 - Moratorium - No Practice
Tentative Schedule: - Subject to change
June 5th - Summer XC Starts
June 30- July 6 - Moratorium - No Practice
July 27-30 - XC Camp at Bear Lake
August 4th - Start of regular season
XC Official Season
XC Official Season
Eligibility
Before you can compete you need to make sure that you are eligible through academics, completing the registration. View the link below for details on that.
Cross country class
We have an XC class during 1st period, and everyone is encouraged to get in the class. This allows us the benefit of having 2 runs per day, or, in the case of some of our lower mileage athletes, cross train in addition to running. The class is not mandatory, but it is encouraged.
We begin class at 7:20, run for about 30 minutes, then we have team breakfasts, which were a huge success last year.
An element that we have been emphasizing in our program
is what I call "fueling" - in other words, eating enough. I want our
kids to eat healthy, but, more importantly, eat enough. In many cases that is
an issue. It's crazy how many calories these kids burn just by living with a
high metabolism and with the mileage they put in. Fueling is a huge part of
performance, recovery, and injury prevention.
With our first period class, the kids arranging breakfast for themselves afterwards can prove logistically difficult. In an effort to remove that hurdle in the kids' lives, I'm asking you, the parents, to sign up for a day to provide a breakfast for the team on each of our A day class practices. This will allow our kids to fuel more effectively, and, frankly, be a really cool bonding experience for the kids in the class, having breakfast together every other day.
I know I'm asking you to sacrifice even more time and money than you already are, so please only sign up if you feel that you have the means and ability to make it happen. It is completely voluntary. The gratitude of the kids and us coaches for your help will be immense.
9th graders maybe in the class, although they would arrive at the JH a bit later due to schedules not matching up perfectly, and that is fine, just talk to your counselor on how to enroll in the class. Students are required to arrange for their own transportation to and from practices at the High School.
After school practices will begin at 2:35 (3:15 for Freshman). Freshman will only have organized practices on "workout" days. The distance run days they should run with their teammates at the Junior High. This will save them a lot of transportation time.
Races - Varsity/JV
For those of you who are new to the sport, XC scoring is done by adding the places of the first 5 runners of each team. The place you get is the score you contribute to your team's total. A team finishing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 would score 15 points. The lowest score wins.
Varsity races are generally done with 7 runners, but sometimes we are allowed more, like 10-14 runners. When you have more, the additional runners beyond the first 7 no longer contribute to the overall places of other teams' runners - meaning if the 8th runner on our team finishes ahead of a 1-5 runner on an opponent's team, the scoring will be done as if our 8th runner was not in the race. JV races are scored the same, and because there are generally way more than 7 runners per team, runners after 7 are likewise not scored nor contribute to the opponents' scores.
Determining who the 7 runners are for varsity races can be a difficult process with a team such as ours. We have a lot of athletes who switch places from week to week because they are so close together in current ability. It's my job to give our team the best chance to win.
To determine those 7 we look at a variety of things, namely the latest race results, past race results, best paces, and consistency. We also consider practice attendance and overall consistency. Ultimately Coach Jacobson will have the final say in who is entered into the varsity races. Having run in a varsity race multiple times does not guarantee future participation in a varsity race.
Every race we go to, except for two, is open to everyone, Varsity and JV. Divisionals and State are the only two that are varsity only races (7 runners per gender).
With all this talk about varsity it's easy to think that is the most important element of the team, but the fact is that the greatest indicator of a good team is how good the JV team is. The varsity group is just the tip of the iceberg. The JV group challenging and vying for varsity spots is what raises the level of our team. Any success the varsity group has at a meet is a credit to the entire team, not just the varsity 7.
Missing practices will result in not competing in the varsity race, or not competing that week at all. We will be working to improve our accountability and consistency, so those things will be rewarded. We are a team, we work together as a team and race as a team. In the past we've had too many kids opt to run "on their own" instead of with the team, but that won't be happening once school is in session. Being at practices with your team strengthens the team and makes us all better. Going out on your own instead of running together causes us and you to miss out on that benefit.
Meet Schedule - tbd
